Use craft inks to make a deathly hallows t-shirt or design your own customized t-shirt.
Remember in my post about the Personalized Water Bottle Holders, I said I couldn’t wait to use my Crafter’s Inks from Clearsnap on other projects? Well, here’s the first one! My daughter loves Harry Potter, so I made her a shirt that she will love to wear.
The front of the shirt has an unofficial Harry Potter logo, and the back has the deathly hallows symbol—something only a real Harry Potter fan would understand. I purposely made the deathly hallows symbol a dark color on a dark color so it would look more magical and mysterious.
T-shirt Decorating Supplies
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A plain t-shirt
Crafter’s Ink from Colorbox (I used black and purple)
Freezer paper
Clearsnap stylus (optional)
Create the Design
You can download a pdf of the design I made here. It’s a free-printable of the deathly hallows and HP symbol.
If you want to create your own design (Harry Potter or not), you can use any image, such as a picture online or clip art. I used Adobe Illustrator to create the shape of my design. As long as you can print it the correct size to fit on a t-shirt, it doesn’t matter how you make it.
Print and Cut the Design
My printer will only work with 8.5X11 inch paper, so I had to cut a rectangle that size from my roll of freezer paper.
I printed out the design onto the freezer paper and then used an Exacto knife to cut it out. For the front design, I cut out the HP and used the remaining stencil on the shirt. For the back design, I cut out and used the deathly hallows symbol itself.
Apply the Paper to the Fabric
Freezer paper creates a temporary bond to fabric when it’s heated with an iron. So, I place the stencil I created on the front of the shirt and ironed it on—without steam.
Then I ironed the deathly hallows symbol onto the middle of the back of the shirt.
Before adding ink, put paper or cardboard inside the shirt. You don’t want the ink soaking through to the other side.
Create the design with Craft Ink
I used a small ink pad to apply black ink to the front logo. I just pressed the ink pad straight onto the stencil and shirt. The ink on the freezer paper can get a little messy (and I always seem to make a mess with any project), but Crafter’s Ink washes off easily with water.
Pull the freezer paper off to see the finished design. Then set it with a hot iron so it won’t ever wash off.
For the design on the back, I used a stylus to lightly apply purple ink all around the freezer paper stencil. This made the space around the deathly hallows symbol darker and left the symbol itself the color of the shirt.
Again, after applying the ink, I removed the freezer paper and set the ink with a hot iron.
The Finished Harry Potter Shirt
Here’s my cute daughter wearing the Harry Potter shirt. The HP logo is on the front left-hand side.
And the deathly hallows symbol appears faintly, and mysteriously, on the back.
This process of decorating a t-shirt would work with any design. Anything you can print and cut out, you can put on a shirt with freezer paper and Craft Ink.