The sproglet turned two at the weekend and I couldn’t resist making him a birthday T-shirt.
(Is this an addiction? Quite possibly. But one I just can’t seem to beat…)
We had a brilliant party in the local park, with a gazebo bedecked with bunting. I felt I was fulfilling my SE London parental duties correctly. (If you walk through Peckham Rye Park on any weekend day in the summer, all you see are children’s parties, the park festooned with bunting, gazebos and balloons. I once even saw someone erecting a bell tent in the arboretum for the afternoon.
I did, actually, forget about balloons, so we walked to our chosen party spot with the sprog pointing at all the other birthday children’s balloons on the way going, “Oh! Balloon! Balloon!”
I made a mental note for next year.)
The sprog wore his T-shirt all day long, spilling not one little drop of drink or cake on it all day.
I thought he might recognise the number 2 on the front, but he didn’t really. But all the grown-ups complimented him on the lovely Quentin Blake drawings.
I made the image using one of the free colouring in templates on the Quentin Blake website.
(I found out about these in a great post with links to loads of kids’ colouring in resources on the beautiful blog Kate’s Creative Space.)
I used the central part of the image, put it into a simple black square frame and then just stuck in a giant number 2 into the blank space in the font Curlz MT.
I then used my beloved transfer paper following the method outlined here. And I was pretty pleased with the result…
I thought about writing “2 today” but decided that rather limited the usage (or at least gave the wrong impression for any other day) so I just stuck with a simple 2.
In case anyone else fancies making one, you can use my template here and just insert the appropriate number in place of the 2. This is, ahem *hides face with shame*, a Powerpoint file so it’s super easy to edit…
Copyright of the Quentin Blake picture is obviously Quentin Blake’s, and these can’t be used for commercial purposes. See more on his copyright on his original colouring-in sheet.
I think I’m going to make this an annual tradition; a new t-shirt every year.
Just nine months to go til the baby has his first birthday — I might start planning the outfit now…
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I’ve made a fair few different t-shirts now. (I even have plans to start up my own little shop selling things like this…)
Take a look at the following (all include links to the images I’ve used):
Wolves in London 
Who needs balloons when your Mom makes these special shirts? Thanks for the info about the Quentin Blake pages. As a former children’s librarian, I love most all illustrators.
This fab – and I love how many great free resources there are out there for creative folk to sink their teeth into! Sounds like a lovely birthday – so Happy Birthday belated wishes to the sproglet and a huge ‘nice one mummy’ to you! x
It’s a lovely t-shirt, thanks for the links to some images, I can use them with my monster.
Your T shirts look amazing. We have done colour your own T shirts as party activities with permanent markers but never making awesome pre made designs like this
Thanks all for a bunch of lovely comments… I am a little bit addicted to making kids’ t-shirts, I think, but it’s so very easy and looks so nice! The sprog has little interest in what he’s wearing however, so we’ll have to see how long it is before he is insisting I only make him clothes with pictures of some Disney character on the front instead!