A Silhouette tutorial with Pictures! Yay!

Yay!  The LOML went to the techie store last night and found a card reader that would work - I spent over an hour downloading pictures of new projects that I've been working on for the past week!  And I'm so excited to do my first tutorial - it's using my Silhouette SD, Heat-Transfer Material and baby clothes!

{Fun and Easy Little Miss Shirts}

First, I washed 2 little shirts that I found at Walmart.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to put on them, but I knew that it would be a solid shape from the Silhouette Store, so I went with stripes.  These are $2.00 a piece, Faded Glory Organic Onsies in a 3-6 month and 12-18 month size. 

I measured each of the shirts from arm pit to arm pit to see how big I wanted my image, I then found the images on my Silhouette and adjusted each to be the size I wanted - I didn't take any pictures of this - I will next time (this is a learning process for me!).  For the wiener dog, I adjusted it to the size I wanted and was done.  The librarian glasses took a little more work.  I found the glasses images and sized that, but I knew that I wanted a chain for them (I debated doing pearl buttons, but kept thinking about choking hazards...), so I used the circle drawing tool on the software and made a "String of pearls" going from one arm of the glasses.  I then highlighted  the circles and clicked on the "Meld" button, which connected them.  I wanted the exact same string for the other side of the glasses, so I highlighted them, made a copy and also mirrored the image so the slight bend in the string would be going the other direction.  I moved it to the other arm and then highlighted the WHOLE image; glasses and both strings of pearls.  I then clicked my "Meld" button again and everything attached and became one image!  Super cool!

I then fed my Heat Transfer Material (from Silhouette) into my Silhouette and let it work it's magic.  Once it was all cut, I weeded off the material that I didn't want to iron onto the shirts.

{Weeding images}

Here's my wiener dog image and part of my glasses image.

{Placed glasses, waiting for ironing}

{Placed Wiener Doggie, waiting for iron}

You then place your images down onto the surface that you want to iron them onto.  Once you have it placed where you want, you'll need to cover it with a light towel (I used a cotton dish towel), and press down with your iron (I set mine to the high heat cotton setting or even linen!) for about 40 seconds - no steam.  If your image is large you'll have to do this step several times to make sure you heat up the whole image!

{Ironing on Heat Transfer Material}

When I think my image should be good and stuck on, I try lifting a corner of my plastic covering from the transferred image.  If it starts to pull off easily and the image sticks to the shirt then I keep pulling.  IF the image starts to pull from the shirt as well, then I quickly put it back down and repeat the iron step.

{Pulling back the clear sheet from the image.  Cross your fingers for a quick and easy pull!}



Since I'm a little anal, I always iron over the image once the clear film is all the way off - just to keep my mind at ease. 

And here they are!  We have 2 fun and original shirts - my favorite is The Librarian shirt - it's kinda Gleeful - which I am a huge fan of!

Well, that my first tutorial!  I think that I can do better next time, I'll definitely show all the steps in setting up the images with the Silhouette software...

See you later - and don't forget to check out the Design Team Call from Pages!

Andrea