Tutorial: Make Your Own Custom Clothing Designs With Ink Effects

As I've mentioned before, I've got pretty limited graphic making & drawings skills.  Even so, I don't let it stop me wanting to create my own designs on clothes.  Today I'm going to show how to make fun custom transfers - that anyone can do - using Ink Effects.

So what am I talking about?  Ink Effects is a fabric transfer ink made by DecoArt (one of my lovely sponsors).  I really wanted to try it out, because I've always had a love/hate relationship with traditional iron-on transfers.  I love the idea of ironing on an instant design, but no matter what I did, they ALWAYS peeled off.  Who wants a shirt you can wear once or twice and then looks defective?  That sheet stuff also limits things to a single color, is a bit pricey & requires a cutting machine if you want to make a custom shape.  And it looks plastic-y.   So frustrating!

Using Ink Effects is totally different.  You simply paint your design on regular paper and iron it onto your fabric.  You can use lots of colors, mix them to create your own shades and layer them too.  So many more possibilities...there's no way I could have made this with those plastic sheets:

The inks transfer best on synthetic fabrics, but will still work with cotton blends for a more watercolor-like finish.  The trick with those is using their spray-on base coat to help the ink adhere better.  I used it with the two t-shirts I did:

It's also important to go by the colors on the caps when designing - not the color of the ink as it goes on.  It'll transfer on the fabric as the cap color:

For my first one I just painted up a coloring book page.  My little miss is a My Little Pony fanatic, so I knew she'd go bananas for a pony-themed shirt.  I painted the black outline with a really thin craft brush:

Then I filled in with some colors.  There's no way I could draw Rarity myself, but I can paint in the lines of a coloring book:

Then I just ironed it on.  You've got to keep the iron moving a bit and press really firmly to get the colors to transfer evenly.  With the cotton blends it took a few minutes:

Then I just peeled the paper away and could see some purple pony peeking out:

Ta-da!  We have a pretty pony!  I was hoping little miss would like it and the minute she saw it she went "MY LITTLE PONY!  It's a Rarity shirt!!!" and snatched it out of my hands.  I think it's safe to say she approved.

If you want to do your own custom designs it's nearly as easy.  I wanted to make a Harry Potter-themed shirt for my 10yr old since he's a big fan, but I had nothing I could just color like that.  So, I downloaded a free Harry Potter font from dafont.com and typed up the phase I wanted in Word and remembered to mirror it before printing (you don't want backwards letters!).  For the wizard's hat I freehand drew a pointed hat with a little "H" crest and traced two quarters to make the perfectly round glasses.

I painted two layers so the black would be pretty solid.  It took a little time painting the letters, but it wasn't hard.  Then I lined up the papers to a spacing I liked & did the ironing.

I didn't iron the edges quite as long as I probably should have, so I could have transfered the black a bit better, but it kind of gives is a bit of a dreamy, foggy feel.  Since that's sort of Potter-esque, my little guy still digs it:

And if you want crisper, brighter color, using 100% synthetic fabric is the way to go.  I had this plain polyester white top I hadn't worn in years because it was a bit boring, but add some freehanded blue sparrows and it's much more interesting:

I liked the freedom to do whatever kind of design I want and not be overly complicated.  It's also making me want to do more things with synthetic fabrics, which is something I usually avoid.  Now I want to rummage though some more old clothes in the basement and see what else I can transform!

I'm also sharing this project with my FAVE LINK PARTIES.

Click HERE to check them out!

I was not financially compensated for this post.  I received free products, of my own choosing, from DecoArt to use in my own project ideas.  The opinions are completely my own, based on my experience.