Heat Transfer Vinyl Adventures

I am finally getting around to playing with vinyl. I cut my name and my old business name with no plan so stuck them on file cabinets. Today I did a larger version of my business name (Whimsey Unlimited) and put it on the door to my shop.

BUT...the exciting thing was playing with the heat transfer vinyl for fabric. A couple of days ago I did my first effort and decided to iron it right to my new Tim Holtz apron. It worked great but I did not use parchment paper or what I should have while I heat set it. When I lifted up my iron the vinyl was nicely transferred and it was framed with a wonderful brown iron shape where the heat had scorched the apron. It took me several hours of fooling around to disguise the scorch with some artsy stuff.

Today I tackled a T-shirt. I took one of Tim Holtz's stamps and stamped it on paper, scanned it, traced it in Illustrator and exported the file as an SVG file to cut on my Cricut with the Make-the-Cut program. It worked fabulously. The photographs are of the design. The black background is a T-shirt and the design is about 8" wide. The tan background is a pocket on my apron and the design is about 5" wide and has a stamped image to the left of it. I am so excited about the possibilities. I even made a quick trip to Walmart to purchase T-shirts and they are piled in my office awaiting something clever to be done with them. I told my husband he better guard his drawer full of T-shirts or I'd be experimenting on his shirts.