As has been said before, I love Disney. I did the Disney College Program and was completely consumed with our trip. As a result, husby and I had coordinating outfits for each day of our vacation! Below are some photos and descriptions of our custom t-shirts for the trip!
Our first day shirts were for Animal Kingdom. Appropriately I had a zebra print and Brian had a dinosaur print. What made these shirts special was that they glowed in the dark! We were able to score an unopened pack of glow in the dark iron-on transfers at the thrift store for $2 (if you can't tell we LOVE the thrift store!). You can make simple or more complex designs of your own. There are lots of Youtube videos and blog posts explaining how to use photoshop if you are not familiar. For my shirt we took a Mickey ear template and created two layers in photoshop. We removed the inner area of the ears to expose the zebra print below! Brian's shirt was more complex. We fooled around for a WHILE in photoshop to create a dinosaur-bone background print with an overlay of a T-rex peaking from the corner wearing some mouse ears:
Once our images were complete I ironed them onto some printable fabric paper that was white. These transfers were designed to be used on white fabric, as you can see our shirts were grey, so to remedy this, I ironed them onto a white fabric first. I then used heat n' bond to adhere the ears onto the shirts! We got great reactions from cast members and guests especially on Brian's shirt!The next type of shirt I made used some Disney print fabric and the same heat n' bond. I didn't want the same prints available at the fabric store, so we scoured the thrift store for old Disney bed sheets. I found a great print of the Fab 5 sky diving, and a set of 101 Dalmatian sheets. To make these shirts I rough cut around the shapes, then ironed onto heat n' bond (double sided), then more precisely cut out the image before ironing onto the shirts. I also went a step further and did decorative stitching around the design but that is totally optional!
Brian's favorite Disney movie is Aladdin, so I planned to buy some Aladdin sheets off of Ebay but held off with the hopes of finding it in the thrift store. Wouldn't you know I was able to get my hands on a flat sheet from the Aladdin bed set I was looking for!? $6 at Red, White and Blue was a huge savings on the $20 plus shipping Ebay was asking for! I made an amazing shirt for Brian, and embroidered the outside, unfortunately we ended up with more shirts than days in Disney and the shirt was never worn. It kind of broke my heart, but it still was fun to make!
I also made matching shirts for our whole family using fabric and double sided heat n' bond. I used the same mouse ear print to cut out solid black mouse ears for all the shirts. I made Minnie shirts for girls, and Mickey shirts for boys. For Minnie, I made a polka dot bow that was hand sewn on. For Mickey, I cut a half circle of red for his shorts and ironed that over the black, then hand sewed two yellow buttons onto the red shorts area. I also cut out our names using the Waltograph font and an exacto knife. Please do yourself a favor and print any words mirror image before you do your project! This will save you from having to do things twice. When you are ironing the letters on, the letter will be flipped. So if you cut it out facing the "right" way, the letters will be wrong when flipped and ironed. I just used Microsoft word to reverse the images before printing. Then I traced the images onto the paper side of the heat n' bond before cutting out and ironing onto the shirts. Unfortunately this day was freezing (around 40 degrees: see the girl in the background in Uggs and a puffy jacket?); we were bundled up in multiple sweatshirts. Our shirts were only seen when we took them off for pictures. =[
I also designed some mouse ear shirts using some of our favorite characters. Mine was Mrs. Potts and Brian's was Bruce. You can make your own images using photoshop or you can buy images off sites like Etsy. For these I did not use an iron on paper. Instead, I used the same printable fabric sheets as with the Animal Kingdom shirts. I printed out my image onto the paper, then cut the images out. I then sealed the images using Scotch Guard water proof spray. A word from someone who learned the hard way: make sure your image is COMPLETELY dry before you spray it or the ink might run. If you have more patience than I do, I would recommend spraying after allowing the image to dry overnight. I then used more of the heat n' bond to secure the image to the shirt. This Bruce shirt was Brian's favorite of them all!
This pic was from the flight home, Brian was very sad to leave; I might have cried #noshame
I hope you enjoyed this post. I know this might seem a bit much for some people but I think it makes for wonderful memories and special attention from Disney's cast members!
Until next time,