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How to Apply Heat Transfer Vinyl to Shoes

by Lindsay Ballard on June 23, 2016 10 Comments

My renewed creative spirit has really energized me, y’all.  I have a list a mile long of projects I want to do now, and I’m waking up excited to see what I can get done each day.  I had forgotten how much I thrive on creativity!

As a part of that process, I’ve decided to take my heat transfer vinyl game up a notch.  I love making HTV items, but I always have trouble with the designs lifting.  It seems that I can’t get enough pressure on the design, and my household iron just doesn’t get hot enough to really adhere the vinyl to a shirt.

So, I bought myself a gift – an actual heat press!  I bought this bad boy (Amazon affiliate link) about a month ago, and I’ve been going hog wild putting HTV on everything in sight.  I seriously couldn’t recommend this heat press more, so add it to your wish list if you are in the market.  And if you have any questions about it, let me know and I could put together another post on the heat press.

I found some cute little shoes for Emma at Old Navy, and I decided I wanted to try to put some HVT designs on them.

shoes

Crazy idea?  Sure was.  But did they turn out adorable?  Absolutely.

shoes-5

Here’s the easy process I went through to make these.  Those of you who have craft cutters, listen up!  I use a Silhouette CAMEO (Amazon affiliate link) and am very happy with it.

I began by finding a piece of black and white flamingo clipart online.  I imported it into my Silhouette Designer Edition software, and “traced” the design.  If you need help learning how to trace in your Silhouette software, check out this post.

flamingo

Then, I was left with the outline of a flamingo.  I resized it so that it would fit on the toe of the shoe, duplicated the design, and then flipped one of them so that the flamingos could be facing each other.

flamingo3

I wanted to put her name on the side of the shoe, so I found a cute font and sized her name so that it would fit.

Flamingo4

I duplicated her name and then flipped the entire design horizontally – you have to cut out all HVT in reverse!

I cut the design out of Siser Easyweed vinyl in Fluorescent Pink.  Over the past few years, I have traditionally only used Siser vinyl for my HVT projects, because they have many different texture and color options.  Additionally, I think their vinyl just cuts cleaner and adheres better than other brands I have used.  I generally buy pieces of Siser vinyl at Expressions Vinyl, but Siser sent me a sample pack recently – including this Fluorescent Pink.

After cutting the design, I trimmed and weeded the pieces.

shoes-2

Then, as my heat press was warming up, I positioned the elements on the shoes.  I used heat resistant tape (Amazon affiliate link) to secure the designs so that they wouldn’t shift.

shoes-3

Then, I wrapped a Teflon sheet (Amazon affiliate link) around the shoe and carefully pressed each design to the top plate (the heated part) of the heat press.  I have heat resistant gloves (Amazon affiliate link) I wear so that I could get my hand inside the shoe and really press hard.  Siser Easyweed HTV is recommended to be applied at 305° (see why HTV doesn’t work great with a household iron?), so I wanted to be careful in case I accidentally touched the top plate.

How to Apply Heat Transfer Vinyl to ShoesWhen the vinyl was secured, I peeled off the clear transfer sheet and her shoes were ready to go!  They turned out so darn cute!

shoes-5

shoes-4

Do you do HTV projects?  If so, check out the Siser app on the App Store and Google Play.  They have all of their colors listed and many excellent how to videos.

Siser sent me a sample pack of heat transfer vinyl to use in a few projects.  All ideas and opinions are my own.

How to Create a Piece of Modern Jaws Artwork

by Lindsay Ballard on June 17, 2016 17 Comments

It seems like every blog post in the last year or so, I’ve said something to the effect of, “It’s been crazy!  I’m still here!”  Once again, I have the same sentiment.  This was a hard school year for us with seemingly unending appointments with doctors and specialists, and we are so glad to be in the “go nowhere and do nothing” days of summer.

While this isn’t a post to hash out everything that’s been going on (I’m sure I’ll talk about it at some point), I do want to offer my apologies of sort for putting Makely on the back burner.  As I know you would agree, parents do everything we can possibly do for our kids, and this year that meant only getting to focus on the critical elements of our lives while we kept our heads above water.  Now that summer is here, Tom and I have had a collective sigh of relief.  And for us, that relief means we can work on all of those projects that we’ve been putting off.

Once such project is finally creating a painted version of the Jaws poster that inspired Zack’s room re-do.  I originally found it online, and I knew that I had to incorporate my version of it into a piece of Jaws artwork to hang above his headboard.  I can’t explain why I love this so much, but I guess that’s just the thing about art.  Zack loves sharks, and I felt like this poster was going to make his room sharky without being “sharky.”

Vintage minimal Jaws poster

This was such an easy project once I decided to get going on it!  I started by picking up a piece of 2′ x 4′ MDF (medium-density fiberboard) at Home Depot.  It was taller than I wanted it to be for his wall, so Tom used the table saw to cut about a foot off of the height.

Next, I primed the entire piece with a good quality primer.  Even though I was going to use Glidden Complete™ – Stain Blocking Paint + Primer on the piece, I know from working with MDF that it soaks up paint like crazy.  The primer was to put a barrier between the MDF and my good quality paint, so that color wouldn’t be effected.

The top part of the piece was going to be Lindsay White (like Zack’s walls), so I went ahead and just painted to top half of the piece in that color.

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

Then, I attached a large picture hanger on the back of the MDF and hung it on his wall.  I wanted to make the ocean a modern ombre and match the lines on his wall, so I carefully sketched out the lines where I would need the colors to transition.

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

The next part was the most difficult part of the whole project.  I resized in Photoshop Elements the Jaws that poster I had found online.  Then, I broke it into sections that would fit on a 8″ x 11″ (normal printer paper size) by using my guide lines.  I was then able to crop the poster to just one section, print it out, and then Undo the crop (Command + Z on a Mac, Control + Z in Windows) to move on to the next section.  The result was the poster printed across many sheets of paper that I taped together to make the sign to trace onto my MDF.

There are many ways you can trace a pattern onto wood or MDF (my favorite is this one), but I used my serrated tracing wheel to draw out the detail lines of the letters, the swimmer, the shark and its mouth.  Then, I just filled in those lines with pencil and drew in the other missing details, like his teeth and eyes.

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

Finally, it was time to paint!  I laid plastic sheeting across my kitchen table and broke out my Glidden Complete™ – Stain Blocking Paint + Primer.  The first area I painted was the swimmer, and she is painted in Summer Sandcastle.  I was working with the piece upside down at this point, so I was able to quickly move on to the Jaws letters, which are painted in Red Geranium.  I moved to the other side of the piece and painted the shark in Ascot Blue.

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

The Glidden Complete™ – Stain Blocking Paint + Primer laid down so nicely!  I painted each color with 2 coats (except the Red Geranium – reds always require more coats than normal), and the color was vivid and rich.  It covered my pencil marks, which is not always the case for other paints.  This will be great paint to use if you have something to hide on your walls or ceiling, such as a water stain or crayon marks.

Once the details were finished, I was able to paint the ombre ocean colors.  The largest portion of the ocean was Marine Blue, so I painted it first.  Then, I mixed the Marine Blue and Lindsay White in equal parts and painted the top part of the ocean.  I did the same thing with Marine Blue and Deep Pool for the small bottom part.  After that was dry, I used a paper towel to blot on the the mixed paints over the top and bottom lines of the Marine Blue, which blended the areas together to form a nice ombre effect.

After the piece dried, all I had to do was hang it on Zack’s bedroom wall.  He quickly declared it “Jaw-some.”

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

I am thrilled that this last big project for his room is finished.  Now I only have to put together a few little details, and I can declare it DONE!

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

DIY Modern Jaws Artwork via MakelyHome.com

Do you have a project you need to get finished?  Glidden is giving away 5 gallons of their great Glidden Complete™ – Stain Blocking Paint + Primer to one lucky winner to get them on their way to declaring it DONE!  To enter, simply fill out the Rafflecopter form below (you’ll need to switch over to my blog if you are reading this post via email) to be entered.  This sweepstakes is open to U.S. residents, 18 and older.


a Rafflecopter giveaway
Good Luck!

As a MyColortopia Team member, this post is sponsored by Glidden.  All reviews and opinions are my own.

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About Makely

Lindsay Ballard is a former college mascot turned political geek turned roller derby playing, DIY fanatic.

Lindsay chronicles her projects, design ideas, and lifestyle tips here at Makely, where she shares tutorials and inspiration. Her DIY designs are bold and graphic, while her spirit is fun and full of color.

Lindsay lives outside of Austin, Texas with her husband (Tom), children (Zack and Emma), and dogs (Duke and Jill). She plays roller derby for the Rockin' City Rollergirls out of Round Rock, Texas.


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