Make A One Of A Kind T-Shirt

How is everyone doing? I hope good! Okey-dokey after a long and busy weekend I'm finally able to sit down to post. I'm working on some new home decor and organizational things but after two FAIL projects this week, I took some time out today to put a smile on a little guy's face. 

To catch you up on the electronic part of the blog, I've been busy even though you haven't seen a post in over a week. ;) I've been doing some behind the scenes things like DECLUTTERING! Similar to so many things in my life, I junked up my site and HAD to spend some time cleaning up the mess. It's a learning curve and I'm trying NOT to do too many things at the same time! It's hard though!

For one thing, I have been trying to add a signature to my posts and haven't figured it out yet. GRR! I tried about 5 times via www.mylivesignature.com and it keeps coming out pixilated. I give up for the time being. I'll figure it out eventually.

So are you ready to see exactly how I put a smile on my kiddo's face??? Well I took him to see the movie smurfs for one thing but I surprised him this morning with the shirt he is wearing! It's a one and only Tow Mater t-shirt. No one else has one exactly like it so he thought it was pretty special. You wanna know how I made that happen??? Tee Hee! The secret is... drum roll please... IRON-ONS!

Iron-Ons are AWESOME! They are such a fun way to make a one of a kind t-shirt! Super cheap and very easy! 

What you need:

• a high res picture that you print to a printer - it's okay to do this as long as you aren't selling them for profit. as long as you do this for personal use, you're okay.
• cotton t-shirt (light colored works best! and you can get them for cheap at craft stores... A.C. Moore currently has them on sale four for $10.00.
• iron emptied of any water
• cardboard
• iron-on transfer paper to run through your printer

So here was the process and, by the way, I have taught myself some new things electronically to include more detail. I hope it helps!

This is the picture I saw first, which made me want to do a t-shirt for my son. I couldn't decide how to crop it so I continued looking for a MATER picture, and the instructions follow!

I simply googled tow mater. In doing so I clicked Images and Large both circled in red below. 

Several images of Mater came up, as you can see, and I chose the one below. I clicked on the image and saved it to my desktop. I named the file something I would recognize and I flipped the image. VERY IMPORTANT! Note: if there is ANY text in your image, you need to flip the image before printing so that it reads correctly when it prints.

Next I set up the image to print. See below for the settings I chose. I chose Full page so it was a good size on the t-shirt. I didn't want a small block of an image and I thought I might cut Mater out somewhat but had not decided yet.

Below is the package of transfer paper I used. Notice the bottom reads "Oops proof" with some of the letters backwards, as to remind us that we need to reverse the text as I noted above. They do have a return policy with Hanes t-shirts if you purchase them from a craft store and make a mistake, which is good to know! 

My photo is printed BELOW. 

I put the paper image on the t-shirt and played around with the placement.

I cropped the image with scissors, cutting out the top portion of the picture so that Mater's head was at the very top of the image.

Once I decided where I wanted to put Mr. Tow Mater, I ironed the t-shirt.

Be sure to empty ALL water from iron and set it on DRY to do the Iron-on.

Follow the directions on the transfer paper packaging. I put a good sized piece of cardboard inside the t-shirt so the image doesn't adhere to the back side of the shirt too.

I laid the image on the t-shirt, image side down, where I wanted it, and went to town ironing. 

I ironed with good pressure back and forth, up and down, all over the image for 180 seconds. 

After I was finished ironing, I let it cool before peeling the paper away.

The peeling part was fun! Just be sure to do it carefully.

I cautiously used both hands but had to use one hand to take the pictures! :) 

I see a Mater! WOOHOOO!

Yep, GIT-R-DONE!

We now have a Mater and one excited boy! 

I washed the shirt before he wore it anywhere and it looks superb!