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Blingology: Part 2 - How To Create a Rhinestone T-Shirt Step By Step
Once you’ve made your rhinestone equipment and supply decisions and purchased everything you need, you’re ready to bling something!
So step-by-step using Rodney’s “I Love Hamburgers” shirt as an example, here is how I make a bling shirt from start to finish:
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Voila! A shirt I was so happy with that I made myself one to wear!
https://dpegb9ebondhq.cloudfront.net/product_photos/216039/IMG_6351_original.jpg
Most designs don’t take as many steps with the templates, but I’ve seen too many articles and watched too many videos where people show the simplest design and make it look super easy. Then when you actually get the program or product, you realize that if you want to make anything
of value, it’s a lot more complicated than you bargained for.
Rhinestoning can be a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun and it’s exhilarating to see someone’s face light up and get super excited about something that I created!
Once you’ve made your rhinestone equipment and supply decisions and purchased everything you need, you’re ready to bling something!
So step-by-step using Rodney’s “I Love Hamburgers” shirt as an example, here is how I make a bling shirt from start to finish:
- I asked Rodney for a vector eps of his design. Vectorizing an image can be very time consuming so I always ask customers for a vector in hopes that they have one and save me the time. Fortunately, Rodney knows a thing or two about tee shirt design so he did have the vector.
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- I imported the logo into Bling !t Pro and used the Rhinestone Fill function to decide what size and spacing would look best. This is where OOBling Pro and Bling !t Pro become my favorite programs. You can change the spacing and stone size with just a click rather than having to undo, change the settings, reapply, and repeat as often as it takes to find which combination works best.
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- Once I figure out which stone size and spacing will require the least amount of tweaking, I get to work tweaking. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and I want my spacing to be the same all over the place so I tweak a lot. This particular design was one of the more complicated ones I’ve done because I ultimately decided to use the same size rhinestone for the entire design but had to use 5 different colors to match the colors in the logo.
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- Because I was using different colors with the same size rhinestone, I made a weed border (which is just a box around the design so the template will peel off of the backer easily), and then made registration marks in the corners of the border. Then I loaded my Sticky Flock™, sent the file to my cutter, and cut one color at a time. I made one template for the bun, one template for the meat, and I left the cheese, ketchup, and lettuce on a third template.
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- After I had weeded out the little circles, I had my templates!
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- I placed my first template down on my workstation and brushed the rhinestones into the template.
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- I laid a piece of hot fix transfer tape down and peeled it back but not off of the workstation.
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- I took the second template and lined up the registration marks and brushed stones into that one.
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- I took the transfer tape and carefully laid it down over the template so that the stones lined up.
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- I took my third template and placed a piece of painters tape over one strip of rhinestones and brushed in the stones for the colors above and below the tape.
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- I peeled the tape off and brushed in those stones.
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- I lined up the transfer tape again and I was all done!
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- When my heat press was to the desired temperature, I took the tee shirt and folded it backwards so that the seams at the top of the shoulder and the armpit seams lined up and pressed the shirt that way for about 8 seconds. This serves two purposes. You need to pre-
press each shirt to get any moisture out of them so that the rhinestones will adhere to the fabric better. Also, it puts a crease right down the center of the shirt.
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- I took my transfer and folded it in half backwards and pinched the top and the bottom so that I knew exactly where the center was of the transfer.
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- I laid out the shirt and lined up the pinch lines on the tape to the crease on the shirt. This gives me peace of mind knowing that I’ve centered the design perfectly on the shirt!
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- I laid the shirt on the heat press and placed my silicone cover sheet over the transfer and pressed for about 30 seconds. The reason I use a silicone pad rather than a Teflon sheet is because the silicone actually hugs each stone and is thermally conductive, allowing an even distribution of heat to each stone even if there are different size stones in the design. I peeled the tape off of the shirt very slowly to make sure all of the stones stayed on the shirt and weren’t lifted with the tape.
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- I placed the cover sheet back over the design and pressed again for 15 seconds so that the last thing to happen to those stones was being pushed down and not pulled up.
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Voila! A shirt I was so happy with that I made myself one to wear!
https://dpegb9ebondhq.cloudfront.net/product_photos/216039/IMG_6351_original.jpg
Most designs don’t take as many steps with the templates, but I’ve seen too many articles and watched too many videos where people show the simplest design and make it look super easy. Then when you actually get the program or product, you realize that if you want to make anything
of value, it’s a lot more complicated than you bargained for.
Rhinestoning can be a lot of work, but it’s also a lot of fun and it’s exhilarating to see someone’s face light up and get super excited about something that I created!
