pony beaded t-shirt

have you ever been beading a t-shirt and been frustrated because you have to cut the shirt into many thin strips to be able to fit the bead on? well. that happened to me the other day.

my {brilliantly creative and Fun Mom} friend Regina had this idea {inspired by Tori} to make our kids these fringed and beaded shirts for our beach trip. go ahead and look at Tori's fringed and beaded shirt...they are really cute. and then come back to see what i did.

.....cute little project right?

so, what Tori doesn't tell you is getting those pony beads on the cut t-shirt strips is not easy. and it is very time consuming. she might have had help, i don't know. if i were Tori Spelling i'd have someone put pony beads on t-shirt strips for me. just sayin. 

here is what i did that made it WAY easy to get the pony beads on the cut t-shirt strips, and all total this shirt took me less than an hour to make - start to finish, including the cutting. since i was making this technique up as i went, i didn't get to tell Regina about it until it was all said and done. {sorry Regina!}

i started with scissors, a t-shirt, and a bag of pony beads. {dangerous combination when i'm feeling crafty!} i cut off the bottom seam of the shirt, fringed the bottom 3" with scissors and began beading.

sometimes the shirt fringe was just the right size to go through the bead: 

sometimes the fringe was too thick to go through the bead. that's when things got tricky. so here's what i did: {please ignore the goofiness going on in the background; i was sharing the table with two PlayDoh artists}

MamaHall's fringed and beaded t-shirt video: http://youtu.be/3i5kwaV27m8

turned out super adorable and i had just enough scrap t-shirt left to make a matching headband:

this was my first time making a fringed and beaded t-shirt! have you ever made one?  80's fashion is back with a vengeance!