One of my goals the past few months has been to choose joy.  Last month I wrote this post after a particularly hard day.Right around that same time I snagged a cheap shirt from Target during one of my $10 Target challenge runs.  The shirt was plain, and I figured it would be a great shirt to do a little DIY with.  So, I decided to dabble with heat transfer vinyl and make a “choose joy” shirt.
Now, I have seen shirts made with heat transfer vinyl using the Cricut Explore Air 2Â or the Silhouette Cameo 3. Â The shirts turned out so awesome, and I would love to get my hands on one of those machines to play with. Â But, since I do not have one, I went old school and traced the letters. Â Here’s how I got it done.
STEP ONE:
The first thing I did was figure out what font I wanted to use for my letters. Â I headed to Canva to find what I liked ( I used Brusher for “joy”. Â I can’t remember what I used for choose though), and then cut my letters out on scrapbook paper to make sure I liked the the size.
STEP TWO:
After that I traced the the letters onto the heat transfer vinyl (HTV). Â You want to make sure you flip your letter over, and trace it on the mat side of the vinyl.
Once I was all done, this was what I had
**I’d like to note, if I had one of the cutter mentioned above, it would cut through just the vinyl. Â You would then pull away all of the non-letter vinyl (called weeding), and be left with a big piece of HTV to be transferred to a shirt, mug, wood, or whatever material you want. Â Using a Cricut or Silhouette would make the next step much easier.
STEP THREE:
Now that you have all your letters cut out it’s time to place them on your shirt. Â The mat side is down, and the shiny side is up. Â Since I had individual letters it took a while for me to place them. If I had a Circut or Silhouette, all the letters would have been on sheet, so I wouldn’t of have to worry about about trying to get them straight.
STEP FOUR:
Now that all of your letters are where you want them, it’s time to iron! Â You will want to put some sort of material between your letters and iron. Â I used a burp cloth, but think it would have been better to use a thinner piece of cotton.
STEP FIVE:
After you have all of your letters ironed on flip your shirt inside out, and iron the opposite side.
STEP SIX:
Now you are ready to take the lining off! Â It should be easy to do. Â You may feel just a little bit of resistance, but your letters should now be on your shirt.
And you are done!! Â Put that shirt on and admire your work!
So this is my first time taking “fashion” pictures, so please bare with me. 😉
Annabelle was outside with me (Autumn was napping) while I was taking my pictures. Â I looked over and saw her “posing” as well, and it was so cute, so I had to get a few pictures with her. Â The following is one of my favorites.
I already have more plans for how to use HTV, so be ready!
Wow Me Wednesday
To Grandma’s House we Go