If you want to standout from the crowd with a great looking t-shirt design you can always go online and spend top dollars, but chances are you will not always find the design you really wanted or sometimes those top dollars are beyond your budget. Another option is to create great looking custom t-shirt designs from the comfort of your own home, using your own Inkjet printer and all within your budget. Not only would you save money, but to really express your creativity with an exciting t-shirt there's really no other alternative.
5 Steps to create custom t-shirt design using your own Inkjet printer:
1. Prepare a blank t-shirt to apply your design – If you are unsure which brand works well for t-shirt designs, consider an original American Gildan. Great for fantastic t-shirt transfers because of its taped neck and shoulders for long-lasting style, double needle stitching for increased durability and quarter-turned body for seamless print surface.
2. Find the perfect image to transfer – Download an image to your computer and ensure the quality is high, the image isn't pixelated and that you are allowed to use the image. Not only images could be applied on the t-shirt, also text using notepad or Word can be used to delivery your message on the shirt.
3. Choose from 3 different t-shirt transfer types – Transfer sheets also known as Iron-On paper are available for light or white t-shirts, for dark or black t-shirt and glitter sheets for that unique party look.
4. Set up your printer correctly – For HP printers choose Iron on paper (can be found under special paper), for Epson printers choose plain paper tick flip horizontal to create a mirror image, for Canon printers choose Iron on / T-Shirt paper and for Lexmark printers choose Iron on. With most printers the image has to be printed in mirror mode in order to print it the right way on the T-Shirt. The 'iron on' or T-Shirt mode is creating the mirror image automatically and you may also use the printer manufacturer site for model specific instructions if unsure.
5. Apply the transfer paper on the t-shirt – Use a hot iron with a min 1200w set to highest temperature, place the T-Shirt on to a stable hard surface, such as a worktop or a strong table, but not an ironing board as you'll need to apply pressure on the sheet. Now cut the transfer paper around the image, leaving maximum of 1-2 cm margin around the image and Iron the transfer paper all over for a few seconds to fix it on to the T-Shirt and then iron systematically in small cycles every part of the transfer spending 5-10 seconds in each position.
For long-lasting results, when washing the <a target="_new" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.photopaperdirect.com/">t-shirt transfers</a>, turn it inside out, use maximum temperature 40°c at full spinning and avoid using washing powder containing bleaching materials.
Joseph is the founder of Photo Paper Direct an inkjet consumables store selling photo paper and Inkjet Ink Cartridges.
by: Joseph_Eitan