Crafting with Andie: Anniversary Shirts for Me and My Awesome Husband

We celebrated our anniversary in style this year with custom t-shirts that said, "We Still Do".

Since this was my first project with Cricut Infusible Ink, I decided to use the Cricut shirts to ensure the best results. The white t-shirts are women's and men's Cricut Infusible Ink t-shirts from JoAnn Fabrics. The men's style fit my husband perfectly. The women's style has a deep v-neck and slight shaping to the side seams. I found that the women's styles run small - the Women's XL is closer to Men's Medium even though traditionally, it should be comparable to the Men's Large - so next time I'll get the next size up or purchase the men's shirt for me. Both styles are reasonably opaque compared to other white t-shirts that are often mostly see-through.

I used Cricut Infusible Ink for both shirts. For my husband's shirt, I used the blue Cricut Infusible Ink sheet from the "Brushed Sunset" package. For mine, I used the gems encrusted Blue to yellow Cricut Infusible Ink sheet from the "Bright Bow Gems" package. The colors definitely turned out brighter and nicer looking than what the sheet looked like before transferring.

My first cut - this one actually was a failure because it wasn't cut deep enough to cut through the material. Too bad I wasted a sheet with colors I really liked. I shouldn't have pulled it out of the machine before trying to weed it, but because I did remove it, I couldn't put it back in and trust it to cut exactly on the same lines. One sheet wasted... but the remains of that sheet were useful in determining the correct settings for cutting so that I wouldn't waste more Infusible Ink.

Weeding the "gems" piece. You can see that the material that I am weeding out is very paper-like. The backing is clear. The gems are also more obvious on a full sheet rather than narrow lettering.

Another shot of the weeding process - you can see the design taking shape. The white I'm holding up is actually the back of the Infusible Ink that's being weeded out.

This Infusible Ink is meant to be cut mirror image, just like HTV, so mirror the design before cutting! Here's the fully weeded transfer ready to be pressed.

Because Infusible Ink can soak through the shirt, place a few sheets of butcher paper inside the shirt before applying heat using the Cricut Easy Press 2. The temperature and time settings are listed on Cricut's website.

The directions also stated that I was supposed to use a lint roller to remove lint from the shirt before applying the Infusible Ink. I forgot that step, however, I was lucky enough to have a pair of shirts that were lint-free, so it worked out fine.

The finished shirt. Design placement on shirts can vary. On the crew neck, I centered the design about 3" below the neckline. I measured using my hand. Four fingers width is a good distance for L or XL men's shirt; 3 fingers for S or M; 2 fingers for kids. I measure with my hand because it's a measuring device that I can't misplace.

This was an attempt to illustrate the color difference between the weeded out "before pressing" ink color and the final ink color. The difference is more dramatic in reality.

Another color color comparison, this time with the gems Infusible Ink. The color difference is clearer in this photo.

Also note that the rule for placing the design (4 fingers) only applied to the crew neck. The v-neck is quite low, so placing the design 3" below the bottom of the neck would have pushed the design too far down. Instead, you can see that the design is placed about 1/2" below the point of the neckband. I just eyeballed the placement.