Easy Textured Heat Transfer Easter Shirts for under $10!

Is it just me or despite the onslaught of things marketed for Easter, there seems to be less every year when it comes to Easter-themed wear for the kids?  Sure there are things for the babies & toddlers, but it's slim pickings for bigger kids or adults other than solid pastels. Time to DIY it with Easy Heat Transfers Shirts!

This year I made a couple of quick & fun Easter shirts for my kids to wear to feel festive, but also weren't much work for this tired mom.  With a new baby arriving any time now, my energy levels are pretty low and I want to do projects I can finish pretty fast (in case we have to make a mad dash to the hospital!).  The thought of having something time-sensitive partially cut or sewn, leaving it and having to race to finish it right before the holiday is just too stressful right now.

So heat transfer vinyl has become a new favorite.  I can put together a design, cut it and apply it in next to no time.  I didn't even have to go buy the supplies since I had some stuff and a couple of blank shirts in my stash already.  

And since I bought a Cricut Easy Press a few months back, they actually hold up wash after wash too.  I did an unbiased full review of the Easy Press here.

I also like to use different kinds of HTV so my shirts are more professional and for some nice variety of looks  Flocked is my favorite because it adds nice fuzzy texture and dimension, just like what you see in retail clothing:

It's key to keep things like this cheap, so I always look for free clip art & fonts to make my designs and make sure I buy the HTV & blank shirts on sale.  What's the point of DIY-ing it if you have to spend a couple of bucks on a pre-fab design, pay a fortune for the HTV and $10 for a blank t-shirt and it ends up costing more than $20?  By bargain shopping doing custom shirts still costs me less than buying store-designed items.  Each of these shirts cost me under $7.    

For my boy's shirt I did a quick online search and found some little chick silhouettes and used a block font to make this layout using Cricut Design Space.  I sized it so the lettering would be about 2 inches high:

I mirrored the design and then cut it out with my Cricut Explore, face down (for flocked I use the regular HTV setting so it doesn't cut through the cover sheet):

I used two colors of flocked heat transfer vinyl, so I did the wording first, weeding it:

Then doing the same with my little chicks from the yellow:

I laid things out on the shirt to space them around the stripe so they'd stand out (the stripes also made it easy to keep them nice & straight):

There's no suggested setting from Cricut for doing flocked HTV, but I did a little research and testing and keeping the temperature at 295 for 30 seconds worked well.  Making sure to pre warm the fabric, press the top and also to press it inside out to really set it is key.

For my daughter's shirt I'd seen some cute text-only designs reminding the "reason for the Easter season", so I did a variation on that with some other free clip art designs, the free Pacifico font and some hot pink glitter HTV to make it cuter:

I used a cute bunny and a flowery cross as my images & sized them to go with my text:

Both shirt designs were a little larger than the 9"x9" Easy Press, so I did them in sections.  I also find peeling off the transfer sheet while it's still hot is easier with the textured HTV, since it pulls less than when totally cool:

The color of the glitter is much more vibrant in person, but since it's sparkly & iridescent, it's hard to capture on camera, but still cute:

I'm happy I was able to throw these together in plenty of time, so they'll get lots of wear this season and my bigger kids can enjoy wearing them.  Happy Easter!!