Dale and Kat from MADinMelbourne have facilitated T-shirt painting at Suzuki Night Markets the last four Summers in Melbourne and we have seen some really really cool T-shirts get painted.
Bright, squirly, cute, quirky little stencil designs…. BIG, bold, offensive handwriting has lettered the front and back…. outrageously colorful fluro cows have been crossed out for vegetarians, political accusations for our supposed leaders have cussed T fabric…. dainty, elaborate butterflies have flown their trademark beautiful wings on many little girls… and where the wild things monsters have scared many a people with their metallink silver teeth dripping with red ink after chewing thru to the bones of little boys.
Fun. It’s been fun. And funny, like when the police clamped the wheels of one just-got-my-licence teen…. or the girl from England who sent her boyfriend a T-shirt to let him know she wasn’t coming home for his birthday like she’d planned… and the multi-cultural tourists who visit the market and want to paint their own version of Melbourne on a T-shirt.
All possible, it’s all possible with a little imagination and the willingness to be unique… which a lot of Melbourne people are.
This year we’ve expanded out to private parties during Winter to keep the spirit of T-shirt painting alive, so we’re available for private T-shirt painting party bookings… people of all ages can invite us for something a little different. Like Ellen’s 50th birthday, that’s really where it all started.. well the whole T-shirt painting concept really took off with Ellen’s help anyway so it was appropriate to have the first party with her.
And. How. Funny. Was. It…. to see adults painting under the influence of a few birthday drinks slurring words on fabric and waking up to disgraecefl spelling the next morning. The morning after art was possibly the best part, seeing 30 T-shirts hanging on the line… smeared with ink communicating a lot of what the partygoer’s couldn’t remember.
Of course, young people love it too, no shame with colors… pink and orange DO go together, a monster can only have one eye on the left or where the mouth normally goes, and who really cares if a painted cow has stripes?
We are left wondering what happens to the creative spirit after the age of 20, why do a lot of adults get stuck with what to paint? Mixing the crowd with people of all ages and nationalities is the solution, that’s where ideas start to flow freeeeeeeely and crazily. Yep, that’s where the ideas flow, when people of all ages get together and paint T-shirts.
Think about it for your next party, and give us a call for a quote – it’s around $15 for people to paint either the front or the back of a T and takes around 1.5 hours, allow another hour if you want to paint both sides. We’re portable, we travel all around Melbourne… we bring everything with us… oh…. and we clean up too!