Earlier this week I was looking for some t-shirts to take away with me on holiday, I wanted something different with original designs, not the usual boring stuff. After looking around for a while I found a shop displaying a great selection of t-shirts, sporting some truly unique designs - they looked ideal, that was until I noticed the price tags. "These are all limited edition designs," said the assistant "so they cost a bit more," a bit more? I thought - it would be cheaper to wear a painting from the Tate! That night I remembered a article in a computer magazine about printing your own t-shirt at home. It said all I needed was a t-shirt, an Inkjet printer, an iron, a sheet of ordinary white copier paper and a pack of inkjet transfer paper. So all I needed to pick up was a t-shirt and the transfer paper.

According to this article all I had to do was print out my design or photo onto the transfer paper and then iron it onto the t-shirt, peel off the backing paper and voila you have your own very unique t-shirt, sounds easy enough I thought. I ended up with a pack of three plain t-shirts for £12 and a pack of ten t-shirt transfers for £8. I discovered there were two types of t-shirt transfers, one for dark t-shirts and one for light or white t-shirts, I chose the dark t-shirt transfers as my new t-shirts were black. As soon as I got back home, I got on the case straight away and set about knocking up a few designs. To get some inspiration I flicked through my collection of fonts and photos, drew up some outlines and before I knew it I had several designs I liked ready for print.

Wasting no time, I printed out my design on to the transfer paper, cut it out and furiously began ironing my transfer on to my new t-shirt, ensuring I had covered the entire area of the transfer paper with the iron. A couple of minutes later I was peeling the transfer from my t-shirt with baited breath. And there it was, my design emblazoned across the chest of my new t-shirt, it looked great, except for the fact that it was back to front! I had forgotten to create a "mirror image" of the design before printing it to the transfer paper, as it clearly states in the instructions. Curses.one t-shirt wasted, just as well I got the 3 pack. I managed to get the other t-shirts printed up to my satisfaction, looking good this time, they were the right way round! Whilst reading the instructions again I discovered that it is possible to get a different finish on the t-shirt design by ironing over it with different types of paper.

You can get a matte finish on your t-shirt by ironing over it with a sheet of ordinary white copier paper for 10 seconds, this, I thought gave the transferred design a less shiney, more professional look. The transfers also work on many different items of clothing such as shorts, baseball caps and even on some mouse matt's. I was really surprised to find that the printed t-shirts were fully machine washable. Although I wasted one t-shirt, a sheet of transfer paper and managed to burn myself with the iron in my excitement, it was well worth it. I am doing the shirts for our under tens football team just for fun.

It is very easy to do, but I would say to read the instructions carefully before you start and try on a sample first before using real clothes! .

By: Iggy Quazi