Hi Pad Peeps!! It’s Katrina here today to share a tutorial on how to use your digital supplies to make custom hand towels for your kitchen, camper, or gifts (think ahead to Christmas!!). It’s pretty easy, but I wouldn’t recommend this as a kid friendly project, just for the hot iron. But they could always help you time the steps!
Supplies you will need of this project are:
- Digital editing/printing program aka Photoshop for me!
- Cotton tea towel. I picked up a pack of two at a local craft store and used a coupon for a deal!
- Digital elements of your choice
- Inkjet printer
- Iron
- Inkjet Transfer Sheets (I used Therm O Web brand)
You will want to wash and dry your towels before putting the transfer on them. This will get chemicals out of the towels and also if shrinkage happens, it won’t affect your design.
Start off by creating a document in Photoshop at 8.5×11 inches. Then use your digital supplies to create whatever you want! I wanted a fun summer towel, so I just used some of the art from Just Jaimee’s July Storyteller Element Pack and Word Art Bits & Paint. I used heat transfer sheets from Therm O Web for light colored fabrics. I actually had a combo pack on hand and it includes sheets for both light and dark fabrics.
If you notice, my image is reversed. According to the transfer sheet directions, you can also set your printer to reverse the image, but I wanted to make it easy and not have to change printer settings!! I also split my sheet in half, so that I could take advantage of the full sheet for different images/styles.
Things I would do different before printing:
- PLAN! After printing, the sheet has to dry for a specific period of time. I thought I was going to be able to just print and go! I actually let the sheet dry overnight.
- Bump the saturation up some. I didn’t and I feel like my colors aren’t quite as bright as I would like them. This also could just be the nature of transfer sheets, since this is the first time I have tried this.
- Clean your print heads/nozzles. I didn’t do this and when I printed the first time, I had ink smears on the sheet and had to reprint. Once I cleaned the print heads, all was good.
I followed the directions of the transfer sheets to put the transfer on the towel. The basics are let the iron heat and then iron your towel to get out any moisture or wrinkles. The directions state to iron on a hard heat safe surface, not an ironing board. So I used a piece of wood. The directions also state to use a pillowcase (or similar item) on top of the hard surface. You could use an old sheet also.
Then you iron for the set amount of time for your sheet following the directions. The directions stated to iron for 45 seconds and then rotate project 180 degrees and then iron for another 45 seconds. There is a specific direction you are to iron according to the directions. In the picture below I had flipped my project. To keep track of time, I just used my cell phone stopwatch to know when 45 seconds was up. This is something the kids could keep track of for you.
Once you iron then you take off the layer of transfer sheet while the project is still hot. There is an included pressing sheet in the package that you use as a final step. And that’s it! It states to not wash for 24 hours. I don’t have an “after wash” pic, because I haven’t washed it yet!
So a fun little project to try and it’s really not hard at all. I am a little challenged when I do a project for the first time and this was pretty darn easy! So, try it and upload to the gallery, I would love to see some hybrid towel projects!!
Thanks for stopping by The Lilypad blog today!!!
