I've Been A Bad Blogger!

I can't believe I have neglected this thing for this long! Of course I have been busy with school after it started and this year seems to be the craziest for me. Maybe I am just getting too old for this rough schedule and never ending paperwork. I seem to get fatigued way too easily anymore and after a doctor visit last week I now know why....I have let my sugar levels get out of control! Bad okie, bad bad bad okie! I did so well for a number of years but I have gotten lazy and since the kids live here it's easier to just give in to bad eating habits. That has to change immediately if I don't want something worse to happen!

There has been a lot going on while there has been nothing going on...not sure how that works but it does! Shiane and Chuck broke up for a few weeks, long story short my daughter is nuts! Okay not really, but she got scared about commitment and all...not sure where she gets that from *okie bats her eyelashes and gives an innocent look* but now I think she has decided he is the one. Thank goodness because I don't know how much longer my nerves could have handled the stress.

I haven't been doing much crafting due to work and fatigue and I really need to get started on some stuff for the party and the craftshow. Yeah I am going to be stressed to the max for the next few months...without a doubt!

I will try to post more, even if it is about the crazy crap that goes on at my house. I don't want you guys thinking I have fallen off the face of the earth...just been hiding under a rock for a bit! HA HA HA

MY FAVORITE!!

Okay as you can tell I am a little obsessed with my heat press! This will be my last post about it. JUST KIDDING! I am sure there will be more!

Like I said earlier I had this design ready for when I needed to do t-shirts for football season but I didn't know at that time I was going to have a heat press and while I might have gone a little overboard right now I am LOVIN IT!

When Linda and I went to the vinyl shop last month I got the glitter HTV and it had a black background and I knew I could use it for my t-shirts, at least for the girls. I haven't found any guys who are willing to rock the glitter! Once I knew I was getting the heat press I thought I would try rhinestones as well so I was able to cut a template by doing a shadow layer and then choosing the "outline" option under the rhinestone feature in Make The Cut. I am so loving this design with all the bling! I will be making one like this for my daughter and also her sister-in-law. We are probably the only ones that will have one this fancy...just so we can make others jealous! HA HA HA

I had to do the same method of "inset" as I did in a post earlier this week. I put the glitter HTV down first and then went in with the other colors, making sure to use the original "transfer sheet" for the glitter layer over the color and transfer layer so it wouldn't stick. I did leave the nose plain because it was suppose to be orange and I thought it would look funny.

So last weekend I had a four day weekend and I think I was able to get a lot accomplished since I did the following:
- Learned to use the heat press
- Learned settings for my Pazzles on cutting various HTV
- Learned settings for my Pazzles for Sticky Flock
- Learned how to "inset" specialty HTV
- Learned how figure out circle sizes for rhinestones
- Learned how to apply rhinestones
- Made a chit load of t-shirts!

This weekend won't be filled with crafting and learning but we will be sporting our t-shirts at the first home game!

Layering Glitter or Foil HTV

Okay first off let me tell you that you shouldn't layer glitter or foil HTV. I have done  a lot of research and everything I have read say it will come apart in the wash. I am usually one to say "oh yeah? well I will try and see" but when this stuff is so expensive I just don't want to take the chance. I had layered regular HTV last year when making t-shirts and sweatshirts and didn't have much of a problem.

I knew that I needed to do what I called and "inset" for the colors and I wanted to show my friend Danita of Danita's Designs how I do it. Oh and if you got time go check out the birthday gifts she made her daugher, even a pair of Modge Podge Shoes!! I decided to make my daughter a t-shirt with the letters being a a tiger print and of course it was a cinch to do in Make The Cut so I could demonstrate to Danita how to work with multiple colors of the specialty HTV materials. I also posted a link for her to watch- HOW TO LAYER GLITTER HTV, this is a great video and they show you exactly how it works.

After getting my letters all done I added a very small shadow so the black would overlap the orange just a hair to avoid gaps.

I asked my daughter how many black t-shirts she thought she would wear and she was like "how many are you gonna make me?" so I guess I am safe making her as many as I want HA HA HA.

This was the project finished. It was hard to get a good picture of this one too but I think you can see the general idea. I think it would look totally awesome on white and I might do this one for me on a white hoodie!! 

Tomorrow's post will be the tiger design on how I originally planned it to be and is my "official" design for this year's football t-shirts!

More T-Shirts

During my trip to Walmart I found some t-shirts on clearance for $3 and I picked up a few in each size. I knew I would have to make some for my daughter, Goddaughters and their mother. What I don't use I will take back.

Once I knew the Spectrum Holographic would work okay I did my daughter and two of my Goddaughters t-shirts with that HTV. They loved them! I did this design a few weeks ago in anticipation of it being this year's pattern for our t-shirts. I really like it being the silhouette with this type of HTV. Sorry for the bad picture but it is really hard to get a decent picture of this stuff.

Here is a close up shot of the design and I think you might be able to see it a little better. You can see how shiny it is. This is one of the ones that the weeding wasn't perfect and as you can see the outside foil area didn't stick to the t-shirt.

I wanted to make my shirt and my friend Andrea's shirts a bit different from the girls so I used some Gold Holographic Foil HTV for our t-shirts. I really like how this one came out!

Tomorrow I will show you how I do fill in the areas with different colors.

Guess What I Got!

Well, well, well...is anyone still around?? I have been so busy with school starting that I haven't had time to blog and then during the holiday weekend I had a new toy to figure out! I have always said I have some very generous readers and I still stand by that since my new toy that was shipped to my house was a Heat Press! It was a "thank you, Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas" present.

Here is the heat press all unpacked and set up not long after it arrived on Friday evening. I sat and looked at it and thought "this is going to be difficult". And ya know what, IT WASN'T! I did find out I can't have it turned on and my AC unit in the living room on at the same time, breaker trips...yep...I need MORE POWER! A friend of mine on Facebook let me know hers does the same things so then I wasn't as worried. I just cut off the AC in the living room when I want to use it. Luckily the AC in the craftroom is on a circuit by it's self so I don't have to get too hot while using it.  

It came with a little manual and it seemed super simple and it was. The biggest thing is making sure you read the instructions for on the Heat Transfer Vinyl, that will from  now on only be referred to as HTV so I don't have to type as much, and see what settings you need to be using.

In my excitement of knowing I was going to get  a heat press I went to Signwarehouse.com and ordered some of the HTV they had on clearance. I also worked on some designs during the week so I could be ready to go when I got the heat press. I spent Friday trying to cut and weed some holographic HTV and I was so frustrated because I got nothing done! I was cutting away but the wedding was the problem. I kept having some of the "foil" left behind. I posted a picture on Facebook and a friend of mine send me messages and told me that I could still use it because the foil part didn't have the "carrier" and wouldn't stick. She was correct! When I applied it on the shirt the foil part didn't stick! I had already thrown away several cuts but at least I got it on clearance so I didn't feel too bad.

The rainbow holographic HTV weeded very nicely and I tried it first on an older tank top I had in my closet. During my trip to Walmart to pick up a few things I wore my tank top and a girl there asked me about it and I told her I made it. I have to deliver a t-shirt to her on Wednesday!



I have some others to show but I don't want to bore you all in one post so I will get a few other posts this week. I am still swamped with work right now so I won't be blogging regularly until things calm down.