Family Vacation Shirts

I've always seen those people at Disney Land and other various vacation spots with their whole extended family and was secretly a little jealous. My parents took us on plenty of family vacations. Amazing vacations. I have nothing to complain about. However, it was always just the four of us, Mom, Dad, me, and my brother. Don't get me wrong, lots of fun. You just see those people, all together, and it looks like such a great bonding experience. You always know who they are because inevitably, they're wearing matching shirts.  

Well, for my father-in-law's 60th birthday they decided to take all of us to a resort in Mexico. Amazing, right? My father in law is remarried so between the two of them there's 8 kids/spouses, and, at the time, 6 grandkids. I decided that this would be the perfect time to pull out the matching shirts. If, for nothing else, a good picture. We were in Mexico, after all. It's not like we needed the shirts to keep track of each other as you would in a place like Disney World. So, here you have the matching shirts. A very easy and quick project.

First I decided on a picture of my FIL that would work well. Considering I had about 6 pictures of him, I was lucky I found a good one. I used Photoshop but there are tons of free picture editing sites online now, so you can use whichever. First I changed the photo to black and white and played around with the brightness and contrast.

Then I used the artistic adjustments, both posterize and poster edges until I liked what I saw.

I then just copied and pasted the image and used the color fill tool to get a Warhol inspired design.

 I simply uploaded the image to Zazzle (there are tons of sites now that will print your design onto anything pretty inexpensively) and selected everyone's sizes and styles. The nice thing about it was everyone was able to pick their own style. My husband's cousin got a tank top, my sister-in-law got a babydoll t-shirt, everyone got what they wanted. 

The shirts turned out great. We made pink and blue ones for the kids and the fronts said, "I survived my Poppi's 60th." On the front of the adults there was a simple 60 where the shirt pocket would be. It's really a great idea to personalize the trip a bit. They made for great memorable pictures and I think my daughter wore her 'Poppi Shirt' for the following two years. 

Next time you have a family vacation or group outing you should try it. It's really very easy and takes very little time and trust me, everyone will be very impressed!