Anyone out there have a middle school girl, a sassy friend or teenagers at all? I have ALL THREE!! The level of sass in my life is epic. I have three girls all in the teen years and there is a new term floating around our house these days… “ohhhh, SALTY!” OR, “You’re being soooo SALTY!” Isn’t it funny when the newer generation comes up with their new slang or vernacular? If you haven’t heard the term before, think of it in terms of a person who has the same kind of savory bite like salt. It basically means that, you are upset and throwing a bunch of sass. I decided that with three teenage girls and a truck load of sassy friends they all needed a special tee that describes them to a “T.” After a particularly rough afternoon with one of my girls the perfect saying popped into my head, “Salty but Super Sweet.” That’s exactly how I felt in the moment. She was being so hard to deal with, yet under it all, I know that she is, and will always be SUPER SWEET. That’s when I set to work to design a perfect DIY t-shirt for her and all of the other “SALTY” ladies in my life using my Cricut Explore Air 2 and my FAVORITE Rose Gold Iron-On Foil!
Materials for the DIY T-Shirt
I ran over to my local Michaels and grabbed some of their black v-neck t-shirts in their fabulous t-shirt section. Have you checked that out yet? You can get all kinds of sizes, colors, youth, adult and even v-neck tees. The v-neck that I bought was $5.99 AND… If you keep and eye-out, they usually have some crazy awesome sales on the t-shirts that make them an even better deal.
I decided that with a “SALTY” kind of tee, I needed to use a material for the graphics that REALLY stood-out. I combed through Cricut’s vast array of iron-on materials and selected the metallic Rose Gold Iron-On Foil. I’ve become a HUGE fan of all of their foils and this one REALLY does not disappoint. It adheres to the t-shirt fabric beautifully and looks fabulous against the black tee.
I’ve used other iron-on materials from other brands and sadly, the materials are peeling off by the end of the day. Incredibly frustrating after spending time & money to create something special just for it to peel off the first time you wear it.
• PRO TIP •
Creating the DIY T-Shirt Design
This is where things get super exciting!! Did you know that you have a couple of different options when it comes to creating designs to use with your Cricut when creating your own shirts or, anything really!
First off, you DON’T have to be a mad designer in order to utilize your Cricut machine. Cricut has made it so easy to browse through a whole library of projects in the Cricut Design Space. If you want to do the whole DIY t-shirt thing and you don’t know where to start, go into Design Space and search the whole Fashion section and you’ll find all kinds of fun ideas.
It’s also easy to create your own designs within Design Space. If you’ve already done some basic design work in other programs like Adobe Elements you’ll feel right at home within Design Space.
If you are more of an advanced designer, you can create designs within programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, save them as .jpg, .gif, .png, .bmp, .svg, or .dxf files and upload them right into design space.
That is one of my favorite ways to create. I’ll be creating and sharing some fun files with you a few times a month so you’ll want to make sure you stop by often to see what the new designs are. I’ll also be creating tutorials to teach you how to create with your Cricut cutting machine along with all kinds of handy PRO TIPS.
Don’t forget, here is the PNG file that you may download to create your own DIY T-shirt with my Salty but Super Sweet design… Here is the download file for the Salty but Super Sweet tee. This is for personal use only please.
It’s time to get creating, go grab your Cricut and let’s get our creative juices flowing!
Disclaimer – I am a proud member of the Cricut team and look forward to sharing my experiences with you every month. As always, I will never share with you a product that I don’t absolutely LOVE and use often in my everyday life. This post does contain affiliate links and I am paid to cover my time and materials when creating these posts.
