A new addiction Heat transfer vinyl

Hey everyone!  I wanted to share this before the 4th of July but I hopped on my computer to find it was dead.  AAAAAAAA  you might as well cut of my right arm.  I need my computer!!!  Luckily my uncle aka computer guru had it back up in a couple hours so we could still make our bbqs that we were invited to.

If you know me you know how much I adore my cricut.  I use it almost every day and use all kinds of mediums, fabric, paper,chipboard, fondant, and of course vinyl.  Well now I have another fun medium that you have to try, heat transfer vinyl!!!  Now I can make all kinds of cute shirts and not pay near as much as you would at the store.   I picked up some T-shirts last fall for .75 cents each, and I have been waiting for the chance to make something great. 

Here is a simple tutorial on how you can make your own really cool t-shirts using heat transfer vinyl.

1.  Design your layout either using Sure Cuts a lot or any image from the cartridge.  Make sure you flip your image so it is a mirror image because when we cut it out we are cutting the backside and if you don’t the words with be backwards.

2.  Lay your heat transfer vinyl on your cutting mat with the shiny side down and the non shiny side up.  The shiny side is the vinyl backing that you need in order to transfer your image.  Cut your image out.  You only want to kiss cut the vinyl otherwise you have to transfer each letter and that could be a pain.  I use a setting of 3 for my pressure.  It will only cut through the vinyl and not the backing.

3. Now weed all of the vinyl that is not part of your image. If you have an intricate piece I use a push pin to weed in between the image.

4.  Now lay your image on your prewashed, dried and ironed shirt.  Don’t use fabric softener when you do this.   Since it is on the backing it is super easy to lay it out how you want it which you can see I cut mine apart and moved it around.  The shiny backing will now be on top.

5.  Cover you image backing and all with a thin cloth to protect your iron.

6.  Iron over all of your image using medium to heavy pressure and high heat for about 20 seconds.

7.  Allow your image to cool and peel the backing off.

8.  Lay your thin cloth back over you image and iron one more time just to make sure it sticks.

9.  You can easily layer vinyl colors like I did here.  Just allow the first layer to cool and then repeat everything for the next.

See these are the cute shirts I made which is why I wanted to post this before the 4th but there is always next year!

I embellished the little Princess’s with Glitter fabric paint, and then added the adorable ribbon ruffle.

Enjoy!