Easy Art Smock

Abby attracts stains.  Specifically, dry erase marker stains.  I would have thought that these little marker spots would wash right out, but, I was wrong.  Sadly, the heart shirt below (that we made here) has a nice black dry erase marker stain on it.  So sad.

Heart shirt pre-stain.

Add to the dry erase marker stains some ground in Play-Doh and I finally decided it was time to get smart.  You know, time to be proactive instead of reactive.  It was time to get that child an art smock...but they were kind of expensive, so time and time again I decided not to purchase one.  Instead, I just held my breath every time she was at the dry erase board and hovered over her, ready to swoop in and grab the marker if it came too close to her clothes.  Yup.  That is easier than just getting a smock. 

One day Abby was wearing a really cute shirt, a really cute SHORT sleeved shirt, at that.  She doesn't have many cute short sleeved shirts as we start, or maybe start, short sleeved shirt season.  Anyways, Abby wanted to use the dry erase markers and in that moment, out of sheer desire to protect the cute shirt, I grabbed one of Eli's t-shirts that was also stained.  (That shirt was really old, so it's OK for it to be stained.  I am not a complete laundry-moron.)   I cut it open in the back and put in on her.  Wow.  That was easy, ridiculously easy.

From the back...while painting, not markering.

From the front.

My plan was just to leave it open in the back with no fastener.  We used it like this numerous times, but it would always start to come down over one shoulder.  I decided to add a button to remedy that problem.

To recap:  I cut an old shirt straight up the back and then stitched on a button.  The arrow in the picture is pointing to where I snipped, with a pair of scissors, a button hole.  Very fancy, huh?

That's better...stays closed...and super cute short sleeved shirts stay unstained.

My plan now is to pick up an old shirt for Eli, as I want it to be a bigger size than he actually wears.  I will be heading to the thrift store and then making a smock for him too.

SIDE NOTE:

The picture of Abby's smock, laying on the table, showing the button??  Let me show you the ZOOMED OUT version of that picture.

We are big multi-taskers around here...eating, dusting, R2-D2 Play-Dohing, and staging pictures.  Never a dull moment.