The Back Story

I got an email from my mom saying that she had been searching for Disney t-shirts but couldn’t find what she was looking for. As a backup plan she included in her email links to a picture of a mickey head and a freezer paper shirt tutorial, she figured it would be easy for me to cut out the pattern on the freezer paper with the Silhouette and then send her the paper and she would make the shirts. Here is everything I used to do this project.

The Design

I needed a picture of a mickey head that I could import into Silhouette Studio, after a quick google search for a free mickey head SVG file I found what I was looking for. In one of the examples of homemade Disney shirts, the text was in the same of a circle around the mickey head. I found a “Text to Path” tutorial on youtube. Now I had all I needed to create the t-shirt design and this is what I can up with

After reading a few freezer paper shirt tutorials (like this one and this one and this one with a video) I found that the best way to cut freezer paper is shinny side up, but when ironing the freezer paper onto the t-shirt it should be shinny side down. That means that mirror image of the design must be cut out in order for everything to be the right way when on the t-shirt. Once the design is finished reversing it is really easy to do. Select everything in the design (Ctrl+a), shapes, words, everything; then group them by clicking the group button

Go the the Replicate Tools and click Mirror Right

You either delete the original design or move it off the cutting page. Here is a picture after cutting the first one (only 21 more to go).

My mom was making shirts for adults and kids so she wanted a 5″ circle design for the adult t-shirts and a 3″ circle design for the kid t-shirts. Since the design is already grouped I used the Scale Tools to just the W (width) and the H (height) to shrink the whole thing. My original design for the adult t-shirt was 5.00 x 5.390, for the kid t-shirt I changed it to 3.000 x 3.390.

As soon as my mom finishes making the t-shirts, I will post a picture of how it turned out.

My wife and I want to try the freezer paper shirt project for ourselves so look for that post in the near future.

Right now you can purchase the Silhouette Cameo for $229.99 shipped!  Or you can buy the Silhouette Cameo Starter Kit Bundle for $261.89 shipped. That kit includes the Cameo, 2 blades, 2 cutting mats, metallic pen set, pick me tool, 50 preloaded designs and a $10 gift card to the Silhouette store.

The last tutorial was how to make a Baby Art 2.0.

Have an idea for a project you would like to see as a tutorial, leave your idea as a comment or send an email.

The Back Story

Now that our son is 3 months old we decided that he was ready to graduate from the checker board pattern to more advanced geometric shapes. We also decided to add some color. In my wife’s college human development class, she learned that when babies are first born they can only see black, white and red. The checker board pattern that we made was just black and white, this one will be red and black, and instead of just squares we have rectangles, circles and chevrons.

Baby Art 2.0

We have made baby art for our other two kids but we had to do all the cutting by hand or with punches, but with the Silhouette I can design everything in Silhouette Studio, click a button and have the Cameo do all the cutting. First I made an 11 inch x 11 inch square and centered it on the page. Then I made four 5.25 inch x 5.25 inch squares and put them in the four corners of the 11 x 11 square. Each small square would have its own design.

Starting withe the top right square I decided to do a circles on circles pattern. The biggest circle is 5 inch x 5 inch, it is centered inside the square.

I found the easiest way to make smaller circles that are centered in big circle is to use the Offset Tool. To use the Offset Tool, select circle and under the Offset Tool menu click the Internal Offset opinion. The default Offset Distance is 0.040 inch, I changed that to 0.5 inch. Then I would do that with each smaller circle until the smallest circle was 2 inch x 2 inch.

For the square with stripes I made a 5.25 inch x 0.5 inch rectangle and I put it on the far left of the square. Then using the Replicate Tools I use the Duplicate Right to make stripes all the way across the square. In order to just have it cut stripes, select every other stripe and delete them.

For the polka dot square I just made a whole bunch of different sized circles and spread them around the square. To make a circle with a flat side, place circles on the edge of the square, while holding down the Shift key click on the square and each circle on the edge of the square, then use the Modify Tool and Crop. All of the circle pieces outside the square should be cut off. (If you want to keep the big square after cropping you have to make a duplicate of the square by pressing Ctrl+d after selecting the square. The new square will be shifted to the right slightly so you can select both squares and use Align Right to get them lined up on top of each other)

The chevron square took the most work but I figured out an easy way to do it. Under the Grid Setting check Show Grid and Snap to Grid, and under Style click Isometric.

I used the Draw Polygon tool to draw the chevron pattern. (if you have a square shape blocking the Grid go to the Fill Color Tool, at the bottom click Advanced Options and change the Transparency setting to anything greater than 0%) Starting on the left side near the top I started drawing the pattern following the Grid lines and allowing the line points to snap to the Grid.

You can draw the rest of the chevron lines all the way down the square or you could just copy and paste them.

I added the 11 x 11 square and the four 5.25 x 5.25 squares for visual and spacing purposes and if you did too they need to be deleted otherwise the Silhouette will cut those out too. This is what the finish design looks like in Silhouette Studio.

Here is what it looks like when it is all cut out.

Side Note: I learned this the hard way, make sure you double check the load settings on your Silhouette before you load the cutting mat. The previous project to this one I had it set on load media and not load cutting mat, so when I started cutting out this project the Silhouette started cutting the top of the cutting mat. So double check your load settings

Here is what the final project looks like hanging on the wall.

HELP? I need to find a better glue to use on paper projects. I used a regular school glue stick to glue this together and I was doing it on some newspaper which resulted in some of the paper getting stuck to the front of the project. So if you have any suggestions let me know in the comments.

Here is the download for the cut file.

Last week’s tutorial was how to make a Fan-tashe-tic Birthday Card.

Right now you can purchase the Silhouette Cameo for $257.77 shipped!  Or you can buy the Silhouette Cameo Starter Kit Bundle for $269.99 shipped. That kit includes the Cameo, 2 blades, 2 cutting mats, metallic pen set, pick me tool, 50 preloaded designs and a $10 gift card to the Silhouette store.

Have an idea for a project you would like to see as a tutorial, leave your idea as a comment or send an email.