Fold Out Cards

I made these cards back in June but never got them published as I got busy with vacation and the like. The first one was for a teacher and the back had a spot the perfect size for a Sonic Gift Card! The second one was Scott's Father's Day card. It unfolded from the bottom. When I went to have Spencer sign his name, he added a hand drawn basketball player at the very top, which did peek out the top when the card was folded. Oh well! Someday I will cherish that little drawing!

Embellishing Disney Matching T-shirts

A few days ago,  I posted about how to make these fun matching Mickey Mouse Ears t-shirts using fabric of your choosing and you Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge.  Today, let's talk about embellishing.  The top R Pooh shirt has no embellishment and the thread was a Pooh brown.  To me, it lacks pop, but it fits it's owner to a t!  The Princess shirt on the L however, has a nice bright hot pink border.  To add to the princess flair, I found tiara iron-on embellies at my local Joann store.

 

Let's talk for a minute about the zig-zag stitch.  You should be able to find a zig stitch even on the absolute simplest of machines.  If you look closely at the shirt on the left, you can see that the zig-zag produces a stitch similar to a satin/embroidery stitch done on a high end machine.  But that there are gaps and even some missed stitches.  The fun thing about the Mickey Ears is that imperfection on your machine's part adds only whimsy to the overall look!  So if you've never sewn before, this is a fun way to start!

 For embellishment here on Miss Tinkerbell, I added some individual iron-on bling that actually came in a large sheet of random iron-ons.  I cut them out from the big sheet and ironed right on.  Easy breazy!  The outline thread was a bright lime/Tinkerbell green and pops a lot more in person than this picture shows!






Finally, the classic Cinderella outlines in Cinderella pale blue with the same tiara iron on as the princesses above.  All of these t-shirts were easy to make because the owner chose popular characters with fabric easy to find!  But what to do for those who chose something a little less obscure?  The villain, perhaps?  Or a quirky side-kick?  Stay tuned for tomorrow's post!

Disney Mickey Ears Matching T-shirts: Step By Step Instructions

We just came from a Disney trip 12 years in the planning!  After seeing so many cute DIY Disney t's on Pinterest, I knew this was a project I HAD to do for our group.  But with 14 different personalities and favorite characters, I had to do more than just the standard black mouse ears on a t-shirt!

1.) I started by assigning each family group a color.  Easier said than done when you need to cover t-shirt sizes from youth x-small to adult x-large!  I ended up going with t's from our local Hobby Lobby.  They ran pretty true to size.  2.) I came home and pre-shrank the shirts using NO laundry detergent and NO fabric softener.  3.) I polled each person to get their top one or two favorite Disney characters and went to town shopping.  I bought 1/4 - 1/3 yard of each fabric.  you can get away with 1/4 yd on the little t's and also those that have a small fabric print where it easy to position your Cricut cut. 

4.) Using instructions from Melanie Brown's Courtney Lane creations blog, http://courtney-lane.blogspot.com/2011/07/cutting-fabric-with-cricut.html and my Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge, I set about cutting out my ears.  By following Melanie's directions to a t (get it?), I had no problems.  For the smallest t-shirts (youth x-small), I cut my mickey ears out at 4".  For my young kids (youth medium size 8-10) I cut my Mickey's at 5".  For my youth large/x-large, I cut at 6".  For my regular adult med/large I cut Mickey ears at 8" and for the double XL's, 9".  I can't stress enough to follow Melanie's directions exactly!  You need the multi-cut to get all the threads of your fabric completely severed.  At that, I still had to snip some with my scissors.

5.) Once the ears were cut, it was time to position them on my t-shirt.  The key to making matching t's is to get your emblem to align at the same place on each shirt.  I started with my smallest shirt (shown above) and used the bottom of the sleeves as they attached to the bodice to align with the bottom of the Mickey ears.  To ensure I was vertically straight, I folded my t-shirt in half to find the line of symmetry and then ironed a straight line into the shirt.  Next, I folded my Mickey ears in half (wrong sides together) matching each half up exactly creating another line of symmetry.  I finger pressed in the my line of symmetry.  Finally, I overlapped my two lines of vertical symmetry on top of each other, using my sleeves as a guide for how high to put the ears on the shirt.  Following the directions on my Heat N Bond, I ironed the ears in place.

6.) You can stop here and be done, but I felt like the edges need some definition.  Using a zig zag stitch with a short width of stitch and a short length of stitch, I zig-zagged around the edges in a contrasting color of thread.

7.) I wanted just a little more pop, so I added some iron-on bling to a few spots on Minnie's dress and hair bows.  You could embellish in any number of ways!  I will show those in future posts.