Caregy HTV from Amazon - Family Reunion

I don't know how many different brands of HTV I have at this point in time but it is over 10 for sure. The difficult thing with different brands is they all seem to have their own temperature, pressing and peel settings and this can cause me some confusion when I get ready to make a shirt with a more than one color.

Recently I had to make quite a few shirts and need a lot of white HTV and went looking on Amazon because shipping prices tend to negate the cost of any sale prices on HTV. I sure didn't want to pay the prices from Hobby Lobby as I need over 7 yards! I did finally find one that had excellent reviews and thought I would give it a try. The CARGEY HTV is thinner than some of the other brands I have and I found it to weed and press WONDERFULLY!

The price at time of posting is $29.99 for 12"x25', yes that is FEET! Which if you are a Prime member and get free shipping it works out to $1.20 a foot! CAREGY does have limited colors right now but the prices are great! 

The shirts I was working on at the time were for our family reunion that took place over Labor Day weekend. Everyone loved their shirts. We started planning the reunion over a year ago to allow everyone time to get vacation and travel plans arranged. Each color shirt represents a different sibling family. This picture is of the first generation cousins that attended the reunion. We were missing, I think 7 first generation cousins that did not attend the reunion for various reasons. A few attending the reunion didn't want the design on their shirt, stating they wouldn't be able to wear the shirt again which was totally ridiculous to me but to each their own. 

We all agreed how lucky we are to have a close extended family and contribute this to the closeness of our parents as over they years they always kept us updated on what the other families were doing.
We are now planning a cousin's gathering for Thanksgiving weekend in 2020 that will take place in Branson. I might have to come up with a design for that event as well, except for those who feel they can't wear the shirt again *okie shakes her head and laughs*.

HTV Onesies - First Project after Tote Review

I know some folks might be curious about how my Explore is doing after my CRICUT TOTE REVIEW where I threw it off my porch and then tossed it around my yard so I thought I would go ahead and get this posted before some other projects post. I am happy to announce that the dial is functioning just fine after I put a few drops of super glue on the shaft and then glued the shaft to the dial. You can't even tell it was ever broken! The machine cut wonderfully, although I did get a few shockwave errors during cutting *something that irritates okie to no end* and was scared the program was going to shut down during the middle of my cutting but I waited and it cleared up. Oh how I love my Explore Air 2 but hate that dang software!! Thank goodness I only use it for cutting!

I found some Onesies in my craft closet last week that my friend Carmen had given me quite some time ago and made up a few of them for my great nephew Lane. When he was born I made a BABY FRAME and a NAME BOOK and this is the first thing I've made him since then. 

I admit I cheated and did a Google search *okie cheats like that a lot and thinks everyone else probably does as well* and found my ideas. I still have 4 more Onesies to do but not sure what I'll put on those. I think I have an easier time making girly stuff that boy stuff, especially since ya don't use glitter or rhinestones for boy things, at least not this little boy. 

This is a picture of little Lane, it was taken a few months ago. He is such a happy baby and is always so good when we all get together for family day. He rarely fusses and is always smiling! I don't think I'm biased about how cute he is since I will say if a baby is ugly. After all, when my child was born I took one look at her and said "oh she's ugly" but luckily she got cute real fast, otherwise I was going to have to send her off somewhere! *okie cracks up laughing*. 

As you can see, the Explore Air2 survived my review process and did a fabulous job of cutting out the HTV for the Onesies, even the finest details were cut as if it had never been tossed off the porch or across the yard! GO CRICUT TOTE!!!

If you would like to purchase the Boy Onsies HTV Designs  click the "Buy Now" button and follow the directions that are listed below. Purchase includes all 4 designs as pictured.

Once you hit the "BUY NOW" it will take you to Paypal where you can pay for the item. Once purchase is complete Paypal will redirect you to "Return to Merchant" where you will given the link to download the file from Google Drive. 

Price: $2.00

Flourish Santa Layered - FREE FILE

I was browsing Facebook a few days ago and a lady was asking how she could get layers in the flourish Santa that has been around for a few years and since I wasn't doing anything I told her I would break it apart for her. 

Well it took longer than I thought because I couldn't figure out the best way to have it layered so it would be easy to use with HTV (heat transfer vinyl) and then I decided the "knock out" method would be best so if one wanted to use glitter HTV and regular HTV for the image it could be done.

Here is a picture of the Santa with all the layers in place. I colored the beard grey for the picture so you could see it is a different layer than the hat and ball, which are not joined either so if you wanted to cut those out of different colors you could do that as well.

Here is a picuture of the layers apart. If you're new to this HTV thing you would press down your black and then just fill in the colors in any order you want. This keeps the image from being too thick and like I said if you want to use glitter HTV it is a lot easier this way. If color layers were solid those would have to go down first and it would be difficult to get the layers lined up.

I said I was starting to charge for my files but this one is free since it is not my original design.

Free SVG download - FLOURISH SANTA LAYERED

Red Santa Bags - I'm In Love!!!

So my friend Carmen sent me a package last week and I was so excited when I saw it was some red Santa bags! I loved the velvety feel of them but I wasn't sure how well they would hold HTV since it isn't a smooth surface but since a lot of folks have gone crazy over adding HTV to some little cheap elves I figured I would give it a shot and oh boy how glad I did! These bags are HUGE...they measure 27" wide x 36" tall so they will hold a lot of gifts from the fat man himself!

On the first red bag I did I just used the same design that I had used on the canvas bags I did. I had to change some of the colors out since I thought the white would show better on the red than the black. I also had to change the red berries to white berries. Where I had a red stamped circle I changed it to green and the black stamped image was changed to white. I was really pleased on how well it turned out.

Carmen had found an image and emailed it to me and I tweaked it a bit for what I needed and came up with this design. It seemed to waste quite a bit of  HTV but I think I have worked with it enough now and broke it apart to where I can get the cuts using the least amount of HTV *okie so hates wasting HTV* and making it a little more cost effective. That is one thing I love about Make The Cut, the ability to tear apart a whole image and use what you need, add what you want and then put it all back together how you think it works best for you. 

The little star looking designs are some Spectrum holographic HTV that I got a couple of years ago and I think it added a nice little touch but I am going to do a little tweaking with it as well. It really shines in person, so much more than what shows in the picture. 

Hopefully I can get some of these sold or I am going to have a closet full of stuff I can't use for myself! 

Organizing HTV - HTV Chart file available

So y'all know my issue about organization right? Well if you don't ya must be new around here because sometimes it borders on obsessive. I am constantly thinking and trying new ways of organizing different things in my craftroom *okie wishes the rest of her house had the same issue*. I ordered some more HTV, heat transfer vinyl in case someone doesn't know what that is, and I knew it was time to get it in a better method than just a corner in my craft closet where it was hard to get to and go through.

I have my heat press on an old microwave cart, and when I say old I mean I have had this thing so long that I can't even remember when I got it, and have been meaning to see if I could put my HTV on the cart with the heat press since that just seemed to make sense! Luckily I have saved my cardboard tubes over the years *okie has no idea why she would even save the dang thangs* and they came in handy for putting on the cart and separating my HTV. Some of the HTV sticks out, which I don't like but it will do for now since it's so much easier to see what I have and to grab and use. I am planning on finding another place for the books and stuff that are in the area where the doors are so I can keep items or projects that I will be pressing. The little shelf above the HTV has some bags I will be pressing and also a template for tshirt sleeves. I also was able to put my sticky flock and some of my rhinestone template material on the cart. It's the flat sheets sitting on top of the tubes. Those items had been rolled up and I will have an easier time using them and not dealing with getting it to lay flat when I am ready to use them. 

During a moment of "why didn't I think of that sooner" I made up a chart of heat press settings for various HTV I have and after printing I laminated it. I keep it under my heat press and can grab it quickly instead of having to sit down at the computer and look up the settings each time I am ready to heat press something. I do have this, well not this particular one because I took off the EnduraTex holographic HTV items since those particular ones are no longer available, in a PDF file if you would like to download and print your own. I made it a PDF file since some people don't have access to MSWord. 

Just click the link to download the file : 

HTV Heat Press Settings

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!

Santa Bag, Santa Sack, Whatever You Want To Call It

A lot of you know the whole rage about the personalized Santa Bags or Santa Sack, which ever you wish to call them and I have been wanting to make some but didn't really have a purpose for them until recently. When I was in Houston back in August my friend Carmen gave me two that she had purchased that only needed names and I did one for my Godgrandson Carter and my great nephew Lane.

I had ordered 6 bags off of Amazon months ago because I want to do a few for some children I know and since I had the heat press out for the T-Shirts I decided to try the bags then. 

After checking out several images on Google I came up with my own design that I really liked. What I did notice is that I have to turn up the temperature a little more and press a few seconds longer than on a t-shirt and I think it is because of the canvas texture. 

While I would love to share this file I won't because I know people will be using it to make the bags and sell their own so I figure they can make their own file instead of profiting off of mine. I know that is not my normal feelings about sharing my files but sometimes I gotta just keep some things to myself. 

Proud Son In Law - File Available

I haven't forgotten about this thing or been on a hiatus. Instead I have been going from one project to another and haven't had time to sit down and upload and edit pictures and write out posts but I'm going to try and catch up with posting my projects, some of which were quite time consuming!

As I scroll through Facebook there are always advertisements about t-shirts and say "order now" or "hurry" "while supplies last" and some of them are hilarious and of course I don't ever think about ordering since I have HTV and a heat press so when one particular t-shirt showed up I knew I was going to have to make it but tweak it just a tad bit.

Since I don't have a son but do have a son-in-law who may or may not think I am freaking awesome I still wanted to make him this t-shirt. I even told him I was going to make it and I didn't care if he wore it to work, as long as he wore it at least once. By the way, he does outdoor maintenance work so I knew the t-shirt would get ruined if he did wear it to work. 

I changed the son to son-in-law, mom to mom-in-law, and the bought to made to customize for my use. 

I did like how some of the words were box negatives and kept that idea and while weeding I forgot a few times that is what I was doing and I took out the little triangle of an A but luckily I was able to put it back in there. I finally decided to just work one area at a time instead of skipping around and that helped me focus on what I was suppose to weed where. 

Here is a picture of my son-in-law wearing his shirt. I had to him put it on for a picture and figured that would be the end of that shirt but my daughter told me he did wear it when they went to a friends house for a get together *okie feels a tinge of pride* and I think has worn it another time as well. Years ago when Chuck first came to be in our lives I made a lot of things for him due to him playing football and he usually was the one to tell me what he wanted and where he wanted it. I guess you could say he is actually the reason I got into the whole HTV and heat press thing in the first place. 

 As always I am sharing the file for free *okie thinks most people slide by the donation button really quickly and act like they don't see it*.

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!

I Pulled Out The Heat Press

While my daughter has not blessed me with grandchildren I am blessed to have young children in my life via her friends and also my eldest Goddaughter *okie thinks she is gonna have to make a post about her God Grandson that has stole her heart*. One of my daughters friends asked if I could make her children some shirts for their first day of school and she sent me some pictures of what she wanted. The designs looked simple enough and I told her no problem. What I didn't tell her was that I hadn't used my heat press in quite sometime and I wasn't even sure I still knew how to work it.

I was able to do the designs in Make The Cut in no time and it was of course a simple transfer to Design Studio and then cutting out the design and weeding. I love weeding! Carmen and I often talk about how much we love to weed vinyl. I know there are other weed lovers out there! Uhhh, I mean weeding lovers....hhmmm, people who love to weed vinyl *okie won't mention she probably does know some of the other weed lovers*. Anywho, when it came time to do the shirts I got a little nervous because I was afraid I was gonna screw them up!

After doing some reading on the internet I quickly remembered how to use the heat press and I was able to get the shirts done. 

Here is a picture of the kids on their first day of school wearing their shirts. These are two of the most adorable children I have ever met and their parents are doing the most wonderful job in raising them. I had the privilege of baby sitting them one night and we had a blast watching movies, drink juice and eating snacks. 

Here is a picture of Marcus modeling his "Kindergarten Stud" tshirt. I had to laugh when his mom said he didn't understand about the shirt but he is the definition of a kindergarten stud and his sweet nature is going to have him be the boy that every mom wants her daughter to date!

Little Miss Kay-Kay loved the bling of her shirt. I used glitter HTV to make her shirt, it's pink and black. As you can see she is a sassy little thing by her modeling pose and the child is absolutely gorgeous inside and out!!

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*

Spectrum Holographic - UMHB

My friend Carmen asked me to make some shirts for her, her husband and daughter for the parent's day at her daughters school, University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. We found a design I could use for the shirts and thought the silver would look good on the purple. Actually it might have looked better with the yellow since the school colors are yellow and purple but I don't have any yellow HTV.

I am finding the Spectrum can be a little tricky to work with sometimes and some of the silver doesn't always make it on to the shirt but with it being spectrum and changing colors most of the time it isn't noticeable although I don't think it is something I would count on trying to use for selling purposes. 

I pointed out to Carmen where there were some blemishes but she said it wasn't that bad and they would only be wearing them once...or so we thought. When she first told me to make her husband one like the ones for her and her daughter I asked her "with the silver? really?" and she said "yeah, that way we all match". So when she told me why he didn't wear the shirt I had to crack up laughing! She told me "he went and changed and when he came out in the t-shirt Dani and I were like "uhhh..NOO!!". Just as I had suspected, the silver is a little too feminine for the purpose of adorning t-shirts for most men! But on the upside her daughter can use the shirt like a dress t-shirt that all the girls are wearing right now so it won't go to waste!

Layering Glitter or Foil HTV

Okay first off let me tell you that you shouldn't layer glitter or foil HTV. I have done  a lot of research and everything I have read say it will come apart in the wash. I am usually one to say "oh yeah? well I will try and see" but when this stuff is so expensive I just don't want to take the chance. I had layered regular HTV last year when making t-shirts and sweatshirts and didn't have much of a problem.

I knew that I needed to do what I called and "inset" for the colors and I wanted to show my friend Danita of Danita's Designs how I do it. Oh and if you got time go check out the birthday gifts she made her daugher, even a pair of Modge Podge Shoes!! I decided to make my daughter a t-shirt with the letters being a a tiger print and of course it was a cinch to do in Make The Cut so I could demonstrate to Danita how to work with multiple colors of the specialty HTV materials. I also posted a link for her to watch- HOW TO LAYER GLITTER HTV, this is a great video and they show you exactly how it works.

After getting my letters all done I added a very small shadow so the black would overlap the orange just a hair to avoid gaps.

I asked my daughter how many black t-shirts she thought she would wear and she was like "how many are you gonna make me?" so I guess I am safe making her as many as I want HA HA HA.

This was the project finished. It was hard to get a good picture of this one too but I think you can see the general idea. I think it would look totally awesome on white and I might do this one for me on a white hoodie!! 

Tomorrow's post will be the tiger design on how I originally planned it to be and is my "official" design for this year's football t-shirts!

More T-Shirts

During my trip to Walmart I found some t-shirts on clearance for $3 and I picked up a few in each size. I knew I would have to make some for my daughter, Goddaughters and their mother. What I don't use I will take back.

Once I knew the Spectrum Holographic would work okay I did my daughter and two of my Goddaughters t-shirts with that HTV. They loved them! I did this design a few weeks ago in anticipation of it being this year's pattern for our t-shirts. I really like it being the silhouette with this type of HTV. Sorry for the bad picture but it is really hard to get a decent picture of this stuff.

Here is a close up shot of the design and I think you might be able to see it a little better. You can see how shiny it is. This is one of the ones that the weeding wasn't perfect and as you can see the outside foil area didn't stick to the t-shirt.

I wanted to make my shirt and my friend Andrea's shirts a bit different from the girls so I used some Gold Holographic Foil HTV for our t-shirts. I really like how this one came out!

Tomorrow I will show you how I do fill in the areas with different colors.

Guess What I Got!

Well, well, well...is anyone still around?? I have been so busy with school starting that I haven't had time to blog and then during the holiday weekend I had a new toy to figure out! I have always said I have some very generous readers and I still stand by that since my new toy that was shipped to my house was a Heat Press! It was a "thank you, Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas" present.

Here is the heat press all unpacked and set up not long after it arrived on Friday evening. I sat and looked at it and thought "this is going to be difficult". And ya know what, IT WASN'T! I did find out I can't have it turned on and my AC unit in the living room on at the same time, breaker trips...yep...I need MORE POWER! A friend of mine on Facebook let me know hers does the same things so then I wasn't as worried. I just cut off the AC in the living room when I want to use it. Luckily the AC in the craftroom is on a circuit by it's self so I don't have to get too hot while using it.  

It came with a little manual and it seemed super simple and it was. The biggest thing is making sure you read the instructions for on the Heat Transfer Vinyl, that will from  now on only be referred to as HTV so I don't have to type as much, and see what settings you need to be using.

In my excitement of knowing I was going to get  a heat press I went to Signwarehouse.com and ordered some of the HTV they had on clearance. I also worked on some designs during the week so I could be ready to go when I got the heat press. I spent Friday trying to cut and weed some holographic HTV and I was so frustrated because I got nothing done! I was cutting away but the wedding was the problem. I kept having some of the "foil" left behind. I posted a picture on Facebook and a friend of mine send me messages and told me that I could still use it because the foil part didn't have the "carrier" and wouldn't stick. She was correct! When I applied it on the shirt the foil part didn't stick! I had already thrown away several cuts but at least I got it on clearance so I didn't feel too bad.

The rainbow holographic HTV weeded very nicely and I tried it first on an older tank top I had in my closet. During my trip to Walmart to pick up a few things I wore my tank top and a girl there asked me about it and I told her I made it. I have to deliver a t-shirt to her on Wednesday!



I have some others to show but I don't want to bore you all in one post so I will get a few other posts this week. I am still swamped with work right now so I won't be blogging regularly until things calm down.