ECU Homecoming T-Shirts

A few years ago when my son-in-law played football I made a lot of shirts for my family and his so we could show our support during the games and since then I haven't worked with HTV much but when my friend Andrea and her girls, which are my Goddaughter's, all decided to make it for homecoming this year I thought we needed to wear some matching shirts.

My oldest and youngest Goddaughters, Ashley and Amber, are both Alumni from ECU, as am I and my daughter is a student at the University so I got busy designing some shirts that we could show off at the parade and game. I was able to add our alumni years on the sleeves and my daughter has "Class of" on one of her sleeves. The shirt you see here is my shirt. I of course decided we needed a little bling on the shirts as well.

Andrea brought me a white shirt to do the design on and she just wanted East Central Univeristy on hers. I at first had designed "Proud Mom of ECU Alumni" but I did as she requested and I think it turned out great! This is Andrea and I at the parade.

Before we headed out to the game I had someone snap a picture of all of us in our shirts. I actually think this is the first picture I have of all of us together which is a bit sad since Andrea and I have been friends for 30 years and the girls have all known each other since birth! 

From left to right: Ashley, Eboni (she went to OSU instead of ECU), Amber, Andrea, me and my daughter Porsche or Shiane if that is what you would prefer to call her. 

Now that Ashley is a mommy and her son was coming as well I had to make him a little shirt as well. I don't think I have written anything about this little guy but let me tell you something...he has stolen my heart! Since he is my Godgrandson I might be biased about how cute and smart he is but I really just don't think I am. And the best part is that he seems to adore his Nana, which by the way is me!

While our team did lose the game at last we were lookin fly sportin our glitzy t-shirts and the best part was all of us spending the day together!

HTV On Canvas Tote

When I was in Houston last month Carmen got in her craftroom closet and pulled out some of her goodies to share with me. One of the things she shared was some canvas totes and I knew my daughter would want one because she has an addiction to such things.

I wanted to do something with HTV on the tote but wasn't sure how to do it or what to put on it. I remembered Carmen had made a mandala file and I thought that would be nice with my daughter's initials. The tote is white and navy stripes and I wanted something sparkly so I sacrificed some of my glitter HTV *okie figures her daughter is worth the sacrifice*. I was able to use MTC to make a rhinestone template, simply because you can never have too much bling. I had to ask on Facebook about settings for using HTV on canvas and I was still nervous about trying it *okie wonders why she is always scared she is going to mess something up*. 

Luckily I was able to get everything cut and pressed on to the bag. The pink glitter doesn't show as nicely on the navy as it does the white but my daughter was still very pleased with the tote. 

I still have two more of these totes and  not quite sure what I will do with them yet but I hope it is something fabulous!

Does Anyone Use...

Aprons anymore? I use to use one all the time but it came up missing *okie wonders how things come up missing like not only her apron but forks, towels, bowls, etc*. I found some aprons pretty cheap at my favorite bargain store, Wall's, and decided I would see if I could bling one up for myself. Oh the apron is 100% cotton and is like a canvas material, very nice!

I did searches for aprons to see if  could find any good decorating ideas and I really liked the "That's how I roll" one I saw and thought I would go with that idea.

I used one of the swashes from the Samantha font and then added the saying inside of the scrollish frame. I can't remember the font I used off hand but I do know I did a shadow of it to make the letters a little thicker. I also lined up the words to the bottom of the scroll so I could get them curved a bit and then just moved all the words up toward the middle of the scroll. I got the rolling pin from a clipart image and just did an import and trace in MTC.



I had originally wanted to do the saying in white HTV but I am running extremely low on white so I went with the Spectrum Holograhic instead.

One more reason I love MTC is that it has a rhinestone feature where you can do an "outline" or a "fill shape" to make a rhinestone template. I did do a little tweaking since the fill shape would have had the rhinestones on some of the black vinyl but it was no big deal to just delete the circles I didn't need to cut.

I was concerned how the HTV and rhinestones would take to the canvas material so I did wash the apron first before applying the HTV and rhinestones. Here are the settings I used

HTV Black - 310 degrees 10 seconds (because it was going to get more heat when I applied the next layer).
HTV Spectrum - 310 degrees 10 seconds, checked it and then another 10 seconds
Rhinestones - 350 degrees 20 seconds

I was really nervous about trying to do the rhinestones on the hotter temp and longer time with the htv already down so what I did was I got my transfer rhinestone sheet in place and then I used the transfer film from the black HTV to lay over the whole image. I placed the image where the rhinestones were on the edge of the heat press and most of the HTV was out of the heat press. This seemed to work pretty good.

Now I guess this will either decorate my kitchen or I will have to start doing some cooking to justify this purchase and project! *okie thinks the decorating part is likely more plausible*