How-To: Making Your Own T-shirts with Freezer Paper

So, everyone has been asking about how to make t-shirts (design shirts) using freezer paper... here is the how-to!

Gather your supplies:

• plain t-shirt
• Reynolds' Freezer Paper, cut to size (for example, 12" by 12" if working with the Cricut Expression)
• iron
• ironing board
• cardboard
• fabric paint
• Cricut & Gypsy/Design Studio (or some other way to create you desired design on your shirt)

Step-by-step:

1. Create you desired design. Using the Gypsy or Design Studio program, lay your desired design out on the "mat". When you have it sized just right, use the flip design feature (the design needs to be cut backward, especially if it contains words, to appear properly on the shirt). <-- I also center mine to give me a good border around the actual design.
2. Place your freezer paper shiny side up (there is a shiny side & a matte side to the freezer paper).
3. On the Cricut Expression, set the speed to 3 and the pressure to 3 (I never change my blade depth, so it is on 4).
4. Load the mat into the Cricut machine & cut your design.
5. Remove your image from the mat. BE CAREFUL to keep any internal cuts along with the outline of the image/phrase. In the picture below, you will see that I kept the internal cutouts to make the details in the "D".

(sorry for the poor picture quality but the freezer paper is white & my daughter chose a white shirt)

1. Lay your shirt flat on your ironing board (or another flat hard surface). Lay your freezer paper (outline) onto the shirt SHINY SIDE DOWN - the shiny side is the side that sticks to the shirt.
2. Once you have the positioned the outline exactly as you want it, use your iron to adhere the freezer paper to the shirt (I use my iron on the cotton setting without steam).
3. After ironing on the outline, use the actual cutout to help position any internal pieces, being sure to only iron down the internal pieces as in the picture below. {now that I think about it, you could iron the whole thing down & remove the image - the design you actually want on the shirt - before you paint it... I might try this next time}
4. Now that the ironing is complete, insert the cardboard into the shirt - this will protect the back of the shirt from paint when you are painting your design.
5. Now it's time to paint! Be careful not to go over the edge (outer rim) of the freezer paper. DO be generous to make sure there are no light areas in your design once it is dried.

6. Follow the directions on the paint for drying time. (On this particular shirt, we used Tulip Velveteen Fabric Paint in Blue and it stated to dry flat for 4hrs.)

After our 4hr drying time, we removed the freezer paper & viola! We got a clean crisp Detroit Tigers inspired "D" shirt!

If you try it out, come back by here & show us what you did!

(if you're a visual person, check out this video... it helped us get started)