Monday, February 13, 2012

Valentine's Day craft: DIY kids' t-shirt

Valentine's Day is tomorrow. Well, 30-min from the time this post posts. It's a late night! Half of you are super-excited, half of you would rather stick a fork in your eye, and the other half of you wonders why there is such a dichotomy over this holiday.

We had the tasting menu at Tintos in Philadelphia a few years ago and had so much fun with tapas that we planned a nice V-Day dinner at a highly-rated Mediterranean tapas (or mezze) restaurant found via Yelp -- Cava Mezze around here.

Since they don't take reservations for V-Day, we planned to go tonight, and my sister was going to babysit. As luck would have it, our son (J) came down with a fever last night, and we aren't comfortable about leaving him tonight. That's ok because I just remembered I was going to make cards for J's daycare teachers. Well, even if he hadn't of gotten sick, I at least had one V-Day craft done last night.

J is in the Bees Classroom at daycare, so what better way to celebrate V-Day than to make a t-shirt:


My husband was muy impressed that I drew a bee from memory. LOL!

After his approval, I created the image below on my computer using PowerPoint (I have no idea where to begin with Photoshop). Here's the final product.


The t-shirt, which is a 3T and the only size left at Target, will be big on J, so I guess the text will be too. It's ok. People'll be able to read him a mile away!

I also saw this cute button-down at Target (Cherokee, $10) to pair over the t-shirt. Don't you just adore the large checks on the sleeve cuff that contrast with the pinstripes?? Hopefully J will let me take a picture of him tomorrow morning all dressed-up.


If you'd like to make your own V-Day bee t-shirt, follow-along:
  • Download the awesome awesome graphic below for FREE. I know how super-excited you must be, but, please, contain your excitement.Click on the image, then choose "download" from top menu (or right-click, then Save Image As).
  • Paste/insert the file into a standard 8.5x11 PowerPoint slide.
  • Resize the image as needed. Refer to photo above for relative sizing on a 3T t-shirt.
  • This step is important! Select the image, then on the Drawing Tools >> Rotate menu, select "Flip horizontal". The image is now backwards, which is important if you want others to able to read the text on the t-shirt without holding up a mirror in front of your child. I suggested PowerPoint but you can use whatever program you like to do this.
  • Make sure the t-shirt transfer paper is fed into the printer with the correct side set to print.
  • Print. Wait a minute or so for ink to dry/settle. Trim around letters and graphics as needed. Notice that the layout on my son's t-shirt doesn't exactly match the layout on the image file.
  • I added a teeny copyright on the image in the bottom right corner. I'd be honored if you ironed it on your t-shirt to help advertise my blog but can't possibly hunt you down if you don't, so…
  • Follow instructions for ironing the transfer on.
  • Voila!

Since this is a long post already, I'll post the cards I made for J's teachers in my next post. If you download and use my image, please leave a comment here or on Facebook, on Twitter, or via email. I'd love to see it and share it (but only if you want)! 

Happy Valentine's Day...or whatever, it's no big deal...

 
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1 comment:

  1. This is a very impressive project! How on earth did you make the bee in PowerPoint? Before you mentioned that, I was thinking you, being an engineer, might have made it in AutoCad? :)

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