Disney is in the House!

Sorry that I haven't been around much this week.  We have all been sick at some point here in the past week.  Right now my son Mason is starting to get better, but still has a stuffed nose.  On top of that the weather here dropped like it always seems to do in Chicago.  We went from highs in the lower 70's to highs in the lower 50's in a 24 hour period.  Whenever this happens, it usually brings with it someone not feeling well, in this case my husband.  We are all looking forward to fall though, so it is worth it.  I wanted to share with you a couple of the Disney sweatshirts that Desiree and I are doing.  Her family is planning on going to Disney World after Thanksgiving, and we are planning on January right after my husband is done with his physical therapy.  I am really looking forward to a family vacation, because it has been such a difficult time this past year and a half with his back that it will be so nice for all of us to do something fun together and hopefully he won't be in any pain at all! I have to tell you that Desiree and I are having SO much fin doing these, and it is official, we are addicted to this stuff.  We originally planned on doing 1 for each person in our families.  We have now expanded this, and to be honest with you, I have no idea how many we are going to do.  I already have two more planned for each member of my family!  Desiree is still trying to decide what she wants to do.  On top of the two more that I am doing for each member of my family (which is another 8 sweatshirts), my husband wants me to make one for each person that is going on the Disney trip with us, which is my in-laws, his brother and wife and their two kids.  Which means that I am going to be making 14 more of these sweatshirts!  Yikes!  I have to say that Desiree and I have learned a couple of tricks along the way, and I will share those after these pictures!

Here is the sweatshirt that we made for Desiree's son.  This looks AMAZING in person!

All of the t-shirt vinyl on this sweatshirt came from http://www.craftvinyl.com/.  Here is the sweatshirt that I made for myself, and it is gorgeous!!!!

It is hard to see in the picture, but Tink's dress is made out of a green foil that looks so much better in person.  Her wings were cut from Rainbow Deco Sparkle heat transfer vinyl that we got from http://www.specialty-graphics.com/ and it is beautiful!  It really sparkles, and again it looks so much better in person.

Now for some tips...

1.  When working with t-shirt vinyl, it is better if each piece with the plastic backing can cover the entire image, since there are so many small pieces here, we did not want to do that.  Instead what we did was use a leftover sheet of plastic to cover the piece under our Teflon sheet.  This helps prevent the vinyl that has already been applied from getting too hot.
2. A heat press REALLY works well for this.  The first few that we did was with the iron, and it took a long time to get even one sweatshirt done.  My mom has a heat press and she happens to be out of town, so I went to her house and stole borrowed it! Now, I don't want to give it back!  I will, but it sure makes this go faster!
3.  When using glitter or any of the specialty vinyls like the DecoSparkle, you want to apply these pieces last,  They are NOT made to be layered upon like the others.  Also the glitter does have a bit of glitter that will remain on your transfer sheet and may then transfer onto your sweatshirt in an unintended spot.  Typically this is not even noticeable, but we ran into a problem where there were pieces of glitter on an area where we still had to put another piece of the regular vinyl.  When we went to lay down that vinyl, it would not stick and we could actually feel the glitter that melted onto the back of that piece, so always do your glitter last.

I have more of these to share, and in addition to this, I am working on my Halloween crafts.  Of course, I am anxiously awaiting the eCraft software update, hope that comes soon!