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Heat Transfer t-Shirts are Hella fun
Last week I had the idea of putting together some custom t-shirts to give my girlfriend Kymberly on Valentines day. I found out that Kinkos could not help me out but I was able to find some iron heat transfer photo paper at a craft store that I could run through my old ink jet printer. BBQ had made some custom Godzilla shirts this way and it gave me the idea.
The most expensive part was the new pack of color inks for the printer. I swear we need a congressional investigation to go after the ink cartridge monopoly with a very big sharp stick. It is cheaper to by champagne per ounce than ink jet ink but you can't run the heat transfer paper through a laser printer or color photo copier because it will heat the paper too much and melt inside the printer for a gooey expensive mess. I love my old Epson ink jet printer I just hate to have to pay through the nose for the damn ink. The blank white t-shirts were about $8 and a pack of three sheets of the heat transfer paper was about $6. There is two kinds of heat transfer paper, a transparent background and a thick cloth like one. The transparent background only works on a white t-shirt and you need an easily cut shape for your design if you want to put one of the cloth paper on a non white t-shirt.
I used Photoshop to make some cute t-shirts designs from digital pictures of her cats. If you do not have Photoshop you can use GIMP or any other design program. Printed them out, cut the edges off and used my ironing board to melt them in place. My mom made sure I had an iron and an ironing board but this is really the first time that I have used it for anything in years. Just make sure that you flip the image horizontally before printing if you are going to have to lay the design face down to apply it. If you don't all your text will be backwards. Also don't even think of running one of these shirts through a dryer after you are done with it.
I gave them to her this weekend and she loved them better than some roses. I know this sounds like a sappy moment but there is the potential to make some fascinating subversive statements through a T-shirt. You can make an obscure nerd joke or a unique political statement and you don't have to wait from someone else to do it first. I know this technology has been around since the 70's but the ability to do this with any PC and printer with out needing to get a middle man involved is choice. I think I am going to make some t-shirts with images from Evil Dead 2.
Jake at February 16, 2005 
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Comments
You're too old to be saying "hella". ;-)
Posted by: dunsany at February 16, 2005 08:24 AM
I made some of these with my fellow Harry Potter nerds for the third movie premiere, and we might have done it wrong, but after two or three times wearing them, the images were too flaky to be worth wearing anymore. We're definitely going to make some more for the fifth book release this summer, but I can't think of anything else important enough to spend that much money on just to wear one or two times!
Posted by: Riley at February 16, 2005 07:53 PM
You know I first heard the term Hella from Mr. T on the A-team back in the early 80s. So now I am not to old to be saying Hella
Posted by: Jake of 8bitjoystick.com at February 17, 2005 08:30 PM
Oh my gosh, Jake these are too cute, I'll bet Kymberly loved them. In order to get the transfers to last longer when washing turn them inside out and wash on gentle cycle. Line dry and iron around the transfer or from the back of the transfer. Glad to hear you're finally using that iron Jake!
Posted by: Mom at February 18, 2005 03:36 PM
Heat transfers have come a long way as far as quality. There is that finishing sheet called dazzle-trans that gives that high gloss and heat transfer rhinestones add a special bling to any shirt. I work at a distributor of these supplies and I have so much fun playing and testing all the papers. My friends are so jealous about the clothes a can make. Check out our site. We distruibute heat transfer paper, heat transfer machines, sublimations supplies, and much much more. Check out our site and you will be shocked at what you can do with transfers!!
Posted by: heather at February 27, 2005 06:16 PM