For all you non-craft oriented people out there who would LOVE to give your friends homemade birthday/Christmas/Chanukah/Memorial Day/Mother’s-Father’s Day/Fourth of July/Labor Day/“What the hell was I supposed to be doing”? Day presents, but just don’t have the knack/know-how/money to buy one of those darned instruction booklets, here is the card for YOU! Listed below are directions for making a perfect, one of a kind, original Tee-Shirt that’s just PERFECT for anyone. (Modifications should be made as to the designs, but otherwise, create away!

To Make a (Jonny Quest) Tee-Shirt
Supplies Needed:
Plain Black Tee-Shirt(s) <preferably new>
Fabric paints <green, black and gray>
Acrylic paints <green, black and white>
Paintbrushes
1. Buy your supplies
2. Get home and realize that you forgot the gray
3. Examine picture you are modeling your shirt after and realize that your green is the wrong shade
4. Send sister out to buy gray and new bottle of green
5. Wind up with bronze and some gray-green color that resembles something that might be found in the discount bin at Clair’s*
6. Set up plain Tee-Shirt(s) on a clear workspace (ie: the bedroom floor)
7. Do not bother to put down newspapers on the wood floor (It’s old enough, it can take care of itself)
8. Place tape to form a square so as not to paint outside the lines
9. Realize the tape is crooked*
10. Spend five minutes peeling tape over of shirt/floor so as to straighten the lines
11. Spend twenty minutes peeling tape off of arms/legs and discard*
12. Retape the shirt, this time making using a ruler/straight edge to make sure the lines are straight
13. Realize you have taped your paintbrush/sock to the floor*
14. Remove tape from floor, paintbrush and sock
15. Put incident behind you and move on to the paints
16. Examine new green and determine that this is also the wrong shade
17. Go through arts supplies, searching even in the back of the closet and find left over yellow paint-like-goop in a cream cheese container from your last experiment with ceramics
18. Mix in hunter green acrylic with leftover yellow paint to lighten the green/darken the yellow
19. Conclude that hunter green and leftover yellow make neon lime
20. Add orange acrylic
21. Conclude that neon lime and orange make puke green*
22. Add more orange acrylic and hope for the best
23. Produce a semi-tolerable shade of green for your background
24. Begin to paint in the tape lines
25. Remember that paint seeps through cloth and quickly find something to put inside the shirt to keep the paint from seeping
26. Succeed in accidentally folding the shirt in half so that the paint gets all over*
27. Remove tape and enlarge square
28. Begin to paint again
29. Notice that the fabric keeps moving, leaving streaky lines*
30. Try to prevent streaky lines by holding fabric
31. Get paint all over the side of your hand*
32. Wipe hand on floor while reaching for a tissue*
33. Manage to smear hand on shirt while trying to clean floor*
34. Succeed in finally filling in square box and allow to dry for twenty four hours “Just in Case”
35. Begin by outlining the box of color on the back in your close-but-not-quite-green color purchased by sister
36. Move beneath the box and, using a ruler a guide, begin to draw letters to main title
37. Realize ruler has been placed on crookedly and remove, smearing paint surrounding above box on ruler and yourself*
38. Careful wipe and replace ruler to begin lettering again
39. Notice that letters are going crooked regardless of the expert placing of the ruler*
40. Leave be and finish, noting as you do so that the letters are also different sizes
41. Working at the hemline use fabric paint to put in small captions
42. Realize that the shirt is not even and is impairing your letter writing skills*
43. Continue on regardless and pay no attention to the uneven sizing/shaping/coloring of your letters
44. Let dry for twenty four hours, just to be on the safe side
45. Flip over and decide on your front (in this case, a picture of Bandit courtesy of your new video cover’s beautiful picture)
46. Set up the front as you did the back, placing tape around the outside of where you want your picture
47. Squirt on an outline to set up the outer ring for your (Bandit) picture
48. Lose control of your fabric paint and allow a big glob to puddle before your very eyes*
49. Using emergency fabric paint removal techniques and a three-by-five scrap off just enough to smear jade green into the fabric*
50. Go on to draw Bandit in black fabric paint
51. Realize that you can not see your outline and even if you could, the picture sucks*
52. Attempt to free hand the picture with pencil to the shirt
53. Notice that black lead blends in on black fabric unlike, say, jade green paint*
54. Go back over the black in white, redoing the outline
55. Close your eyes as you continue, it hurts less than when you don’t watch
56. Upon completing the outline, take your white acrylic and begin to fill in the lines
57. Whip out the black fabric paint and attempt to cover up the mistakes you make with the white acrylic*
58. Put out to dry for twenty four hours
59. Try filling in paint sections again, lying on the floor to get real close
60. Lose all feeling in your rib cage from lying on the floor too long
61. Sit up and knock over cup of water*
62. Decide that even though Bandit looks mostly black he’s white enough
63. Let dry for twenty four hours
64. To finish, wrap in pretty paper and line the bird cage
65. Have sister come in and remove it from the bird cage before any damage is done
66. Send it to friends with apology note and gift certificate

*: curse fervently, as if passing a kidney stone
sister: can be substituted with brother
bird: author does not own a bird
*****

Yes, all of that actually happened to me.
Comments, questions, raven haired men? Send all to curtin@fcc.net