Hey there! I know it's Monday and I am supposed to have a project for National Old Stuff Day over at Bitten by the Bug 2, but instead I am celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday!! When asked, "How did you spend your weekend?", I could reply "Seuss Crafting!"
With three of my four "teacher people kids" teaching in elementary schools, I spent the weekend getting my crafting on, learning new skills, and making cute, cute shirts! Here in Aiken County Schools, Dr. Seuss' birthday is celebrated all week long - just like I enjoy celebrating my birthday!! Each day has a theme and the teachers dress according to that day's theme. I thought my teacher people needed Dr. Seuss inspired shirts for this week. I created two shirt designs, actually three, but I ran out of heat transfer vinyl, so the third design will give each of them a second shirt later in the week. For this post I will tell you about the first two designs.
I decided that I wanted to make one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish themed shirts. I searched Google for Dr Seuss Fish images and found the image above. It was a photo so I need to figure out how to cut it with my Cricut Explore.
I found a list of valuable links on a facebook group page to which I am a member. They had an "SVG Converter" listed. I followed the link and ran the above image though the converter. Below is a jpg of the final SVG I ended up with! It was perfect. My fish distorted a little bit because I did not check the size of my photo above (in megapixels) ahead of time thus I entered square dimension. I learned as I went along and I know know to right click my jpg, check the size in properties, and double that number when converting. Anyway, I like my shorter, rounder fishies! And I go very lucky in that the top two fish came out as outlines and the bottom fish as a solid.
I imported the SVG file (like the photo above) in to the Cricut Design Space software as a Vector image. Once I had the image on the mat, I ungrouped the image. I then found which outline most closely matched my solid fish and I deleted the other outline. I copied and pasted my fish and his outline four times for a total of five fish. I resized the fish so that only the two fish together would be the same size. I then changed the colors of the solid fish from black to gray (I had no yellow HTV), two green, one red and one blue.
I then set the Explore for Heat Transfer Material and hit the GO button. I did have some adjustments to make on the preview screen. When I told the machine to cut enough of everything for 2 shirts, the preview did not flip all of my fish - I have no idea why, but I just went with it. The cutting went very smoothly. I had to do quite a bit of weeding on the fish outlines, but they were completely worth it! I love how the shirts came out.
My son-in-law wanted his last name only on the back and the #8, like a team shirt. I think this made it more "guy like" for him!
Crissie's shirt was made with a different image. I started with this Cat In The Hat image, again from Google.
When I ran this image through the converter (I had learned to look at the pixel size by this time) it came out as an SVG of the image below. And this image did make my cutting, weeding, etc. a bit more complicated.
I had planned to cut the image in four different colors of HTV and dissect the cuts and use only the parts I needed. However, the best made plans... I ran out of red and black HTV - I only had scraps left. So instead I cut the SVG in dark, dark gray shimmer vinyl. I then used red scraps and but the balloons and part of the cat. I saved the acetate cover on the HTV and traced the blade marks for the green and blue balloons onto HTV (I had not yellow).
I used a craft knife and cut the middle out of the solid balloon and red sections of the hat. I used scissors and hand trimmed the bow tie to fit the design. I did the same thing with the red hat pieces. I trimmed them to fit inside the area I cut out of the hat.
My balloons did not fit into the balloon cut outs as well as I would have liked, but I thought the hat came out GREAT. Overall I was quite pleased with this shirt. Crissie told me that she liked the sparkly dark gray HTV too. Yay!
Hopefully my new supply of HTV will arrive tomorrow and I can get a second shirt made for each of teacher people for Thursday! I do have that third design all ready to go in Cricut Design Space!!
Also coming to my blog this week: How I pimped my Cricut Explore!!!
Please do go by Bitten By The Bug 2 and check out the Design Team's fabulous projects!!!
