Back to School Week - Day 2

Welcome back to my special Back to School Week!

If you missed yesterday's post, you can find it here.

As promised, today I'm going to show you how to spruce up some plain ole t-shirts for the kids. My boys love Star Wars but I haven't been able to find any vintage Ts for them. So I decided to make my own. And it's surprisingly easy.

To start, you need an inkjet printer and some printable iron-on sheets. There are many different types of heat transfers available, and at varying prices, so shop around.
These are just a few:

The one on the right is actually really thin fabric that you can iron onto another piece of fabric. But for this project I used the Silhouette brand of Printable Heat Transfers - for dark fabrics.

My boys each chose an image that they wanted, off the internet. But you could use a picture you've taken or maybe even a picture that your child has drawn! If that's the case, you would just need to scan it before proceeding to the next step. I brought the pictures into MS Word and adjusted the sizes.

Then I print the image onto the heat transfer sheet. They come with instructions on how to do this if you need.

Note: for this brand I didn't need to make the picture a mirror-image but it's worth double checking the instructions there.

Once printed, you are ready to cut around the image and peel off the backing.
Place the image onto the shirt, with the image facing up.

Image source

The instructions for the sheets that I used recommend ironing the image on for about 15 seconds, using a piece of fabric in between. I found that this wasn't long enough to get the transfers to adhere fully. Maybe my cloth was too thick?

If you look closely at the shirt on the bottom, you'll see where I held the iron on too long and it left iron marks (where the image is brighter). Oops!

Once the image was set in place I found it best to turn the shirt inside out and place the iron directly on it, but making sure to keep it moving. It seemed to work better this way for me, and the image didn't peel on the edges. 

Image source

My boys just LOVE their new shirts. I might have to make some more just to get these ones off of them!!

I had to show you this shot because it just cracks me up.
Evan might need a couple of pointers on his tough guy pose....
Thanks for stopping by.