Christmas T-Shirt
Christmas is LITERALLY just around the corner (can you actually believe it?) and with the festive excitement building at work, on the high street mainly from retail workers desperate for a day off, everyone gets into the spirit by showcasing their finest/worst Christmas jumpers, t-shirts and accessories. As much as I LOVE all things Christmas I find myself hating most of the Christmas jumpers and t-shirts I find and because of this, I thought this would be the perfect time to create my own. I mean how difficult can it be, right?
If you have read my previous blogs you’ll know I have a love of screen printing………. and the love is still with me. I decided I was going to screen print a ‘Van Cartier’ Christmas t-shirt as I already had all of the colours that would work amazingly with a Christmas theme. I can’t believe I am going to say this, but, I wanted a more simplistic t-shirt. So I came up with the idea of a bauble spelling out Van Cartier. I thought it would be pretty straightforward to create and could EASILY be embellished to add a little something-something to the finished look, I mean what is Christmas without a few AB Swarovski crystals, right?
The best thing to use to get the text into the shape you want is to use Abode Illustrator (I had help doing it as I am really not that advanced with a computer haha) Depending on your skill level you can pretty much get the word into any shape.
Once you are happy with the design, print it out and place a sheet of acetate over it and using a cutting mat and a sharp scalpel slowly trace the design with the scalpel and cut out the letters. Once the stencil is ready you can go ahead and start screen printing.
I decided I was going to print on a marl grey t-shirt and so for the gold I used an opaque ink that is more suitable for printing onto darker fabric. These tend to be a little more pricy than the regular inks but I thought the metallic ink would work much better as the colouring is so light.
To add a little something more to the bauble I decided to add a few hotfix 8ss and 16ss AB Swarovski crsytals. If you buy a hotfix applicator it could not be any easier to apply these to pretty much any kind of surface.
What is a more suitable way to shoot the festive tee then in front of a Christmas tree wearing the festive accessories you shot in your last blog………AAAAAAAAAAND my new Van Cartier name necklace!
I wish everyone the most wonderful Christmas and festive period, lets make it a truely magical time to end the most horrendous year! Take care, I’m looking forward to getting back to it after Christmas!!!!