Iron-on Vinyl T-Shirts

I have discovered a new love... Iron on vinyl. I centered my Christmas gifts to my nephews around this stuff.

The place I buy my vinyl from is signwarehouse.com. The vinyl comes on giant rolls, in many colors and is pretty cheap. I was excited to see that they also sell Iron-on vinyl. It also comes in many colors and designs. For this project, I bought Enduratex HotMark 70. It is very thin, and weeds easy. Go HERE to buy some!

Here is what the roll of vinyl looks like. Cut a piece off to the size you want the image to be. I mainly did 7"x7" for size small.
Since my nephew loves skulls, I found a dingbat and sized it to 7"x7".
Cut the image out. I used my Cricut. Make sure the vinyl is SHINY side up. Dull side down. Center the image on the shirt.
Next, put two pieces of printer paper on top of the image. It acts like a buffer between the iron. Do not have the iron set on the steam option. It needs to be a dry heat. Move the iron around the area for up to a minute. Next, peel the plastic off the top of the image. If the vinyl comes up with it, it needs to have more time with the iron.Now it is ready to wear!

These are all the shirts I made...




I hope everyone had a great Christmas! I sure did...

Bottlebrush Christmas Trees

One day while scrolling through Pinterest, I found this picture:Gorgeous! So I found a couple of tutorials over the web and combined them all into this one tutorial:

I bought two bags of Lemax Christmas village trees. I also bought two (3 to a pack) pack of medium sized trees at Hobby Lobby. I have also seen miniature trees at Dollar Tree. Michaels and Kmart also carry the Lemax trees. I bought mine off of Ebay for $10 a bag plus shipping. I wanted a variation of heights, so I found that this bag is the best for quantity and price.
Next, pour bleach in a bowl and place the trees in the bowl. You do this to get the dye off the trees. You really don’t have to bleach them if you don’t want to. I bleached half of them and the other half I didn’t. It does change the color of the glitter though. If you use darker color glitters it doesn’t matter, but if you don’t bleach the trees the lighter color glitters won’t look as good.
Wash the bleach out of the trees and let the trees dry on a dishrag.
Since I wanted to add some bling to some of the trees, I went to Hobby Lobby and bought miniature ornaments and some berries. If you can go when Christmas stuff is 50%, it’s really cheap to get all this stuff. I got the package of glitter at Michaels. I went this route because I wanted many different colored trees. I used a 50% off coupon so it was really cheap ($8 I think).
To add glitter to the trees, first, take the little stands off the end of the trees, then find some pliers or something to grip the end of the tree. Next, spray either spray adhesive or spray-paint all over the tree. Then dump glitter all over the tree while rotating it around. Shake any excess glitter off, then put the stand back on the tree and set it aside. REPEAT this step for all the other trees.Now, you can add the bling... Hot glue the mini bulbs/berries to the tree. I only did this a few of the trees.

Finally find somewhere to display them. Arrange them so the different sizes are mingled together.



I also made the Merry Christmas sign behind the trees. I like it, but I may figure something else out… It’s fine for the mean time.

Merry Christmas!!!