September is here and Fall is around the corner. Before we move on to that, lets revisit August. During August, I worked on two custom pieces, a shirt in honor of the Great Kobe Bryant and an overall dress for The Renaissance staring the Queen Bey - Beyonce!
Alien Superstar custom overall dress
For the show I wanted to take an approach at “Alien Superstar”, the feeling of being free, wearing metallic cyberpunk colors, and of course make it ME! I had a black overall dress and a Dare2bdipheret long sleeve shirt, but the overall dress was so blan. I found this blue metallic vinyl and instantly fell in love. The blue matched the color of my shirt and I was like well I need it! I’ve never done vinyl on denim and here is the perfect opportunity to do it. Once I secured the color, I had a vision of flames. For me the flames represented being heated but also kind of like a rebirth type of thing like I’m in this transition phase and it was perfect. Blue flame, yay! I love rhinestones and wanted to incorporate them since I was trying new things with denim. "R" and "E" on the back because hello RenaissancE. With the design and materials together, only thing left to do was to cut it on the Cricut.
Trial and error...
Two thing I did learned from making this is do not put vinyl on the seams and if the denim (or any material) is stretchy, depending on the type of vinyl you use, it is going to STRETCH! Although the dress came out cute with the blue flame as soon as I started moving, the vinyl started to tear. It could’ve been the vinyl material. I do not know what brand it was (bought on sale lol). Or maybe it was the fact that the denim was very stretchy. Not sure the reason why, but this is not the last I will be using vinyl on denim.
Now let's get into the rhinestone part. I had to improvise, I planned to have the "R" and "E" on the back pockets, using Mark Richards Additions Bendable Rhinestone Iron-on Trim to make the letters, but the trim was not sticking 100% after being pressed, the "E" would not stay on. And that was due to user error. Make sure you read instructions carefully. Anyway, after many unsuccessful attempts, on the day of the SHOW, I had to move on and in the fourth quarter created a E rhinestone outline to use the Blue & Green ss10 Rhinestones. Those pressed on with no problem. Now I can say I have pressed rhinestones on denim!
Materials:
- Blue Metallic Iron Vinyl
- Dickies overall dress
- Blue & Green ss10 Rhinestones
- Flock vinyl (used to cut the rhinestone outline)
- HTV transfer tape (used to transfer/press the rhinestone to material)
- Mark Richards Additions Bendable Rhinestone Iron-on Trim
Custom Kobe Shirt
Next, I had a request for a Kobe shirt to match a pair Kobes. He wanted the shirt to be burgundy and the design to be neon electric green. It was important for me to see how can I make this shirt different from what is sold in stores and how could I add a YuSoCrafty flare to it? Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop came in handy. I remade the Kobe logo and started added details that were going to make it look metallic and embossed for the front of the shirt design. I wanted to give more than. I decided to add a design on the back of the shirt and make the back design different from the front design. I did that by adding a black mamba snake skin overlay the neon green design. Shoutout to CreativeFabrica for having the snake skin overlays. Now with some tweaks to the front design and to the back design, I was able to finally get it to a place where I was happy with it and sent to be printed as a DTF transfer.
Materials:
- Port of Company XXXLT athletic maroon shirt
- DTF was the only option for this. I love DTF. I love how it feels on shirts and I love how it feels on different materials. Now, my go to is a PerfecPress HTV, and they come through every time.
Final Results
I am happy with how both pieces came out. One piece a little more than the other (Custom Kobe Shirt > the overall dress). I learned a lot from these pieces and I can't wait to share with y'all more on creating your own designs using Illustrator/Photoshop (or Canva), HTV on denim, rhinestone application, and more in time!
Custom Kobe Shirt: Front & Back
Custom Overall Dress
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