Dinosaur Birthday Party Shirts!

This weekend is Davy's birthday. I wanted to do a craft that 5 year-olds could manage on their own and still make something nice. I thought about machine embroidering a dinosaur on a shirt and letting them decorate it with fabric paint. (to self) "Are you crazy?! You have no free time! Keep it simple!" So, I revised my original idea to make appliqued dinos using Heat 'n Bond and let the kids decorate them with fabric markers.

This picture shows one of the finished shirts. The green dino is the original applique that was embellished with grass, dirt, an underground fossil, and eggs (not dino poo). Here's what I started with:

I made 10 different shirts and inserted cardboard to make them smooth:

The kids had a really good time decorating. They worked on the shirts for about 20 minutes and then put them on so we could take pictures (for the thank you notes).

I think this idea has a lot of scope. You could make the appliques work with any party theme, for girls or boys: tea party, space, cowboys, ballerina, etc. The materials were very inexpensive. I bought a 10 pack of boy's undershirts at Walmart for $7 and 1/4 yard of several plain fabrics for the appliques. The fabric markers were my biggest investment. I bought 2 packs for $10 each (but these can be used again and I bought the more expensive brand). What do you think??