Application Order Matters – Which Siser Heat Transfer Vinyl Should I Apply First?

For this Throwback Thursday I decided to make my own custom Napster shirt.

“Napster? What’s Napster?”

Napster was the pioneer of the peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing of music files. There were many P2P file sharing programs after Napster, like: LimeWire, Kazaa, Madster, Grokster, and more.

Napster really started making their impact in the music world in the early 2000’s… you know, that time in the internet world where we still had dial up.

If you remember this screen, you know the pain.

I remember spending hours and hours getting yelled at by my folks for holding up the phone line because I was online downloading music from Napster. Totally worth getting grounded over because I had new music to listen to while I was locked in my bedroom. #Winning

Now P2P has come so far along that it’s honestly difficult for me to stay up on. However, Napster will always be my favorite! So 15 years later I’ve decided to customize my own shirt with three different Siser materials: Green Brick, EasyWeed Electric Silver Lens, and Royal StripFlock.

If you’re familiar with these material types, you already know that they are all different thicknesses. If you aren’t familiar with them, let me get a little technical with you –

Brick is 1000 Microns

EasyWeed Electric is 90 Microns

StripFlock is 410 Microns

When it comes time to apply these transfers, the application order really does matter. When using a heat press, the application order allows each material to get even pressure. If you’re using a home iron for your application, the order they are applied doesn’t matter as much because you can directly target the individual materials.

Before reading ahead, can you guess what order I applied these vinyls?

a) EasyWeed Electric, Brick, Stripflock

b) Brick, EasyWeed Electric, Stripflock

c) StripFlock, EasyWeed Electric, Brick

d) EasyWeed Electric, StripFlock, Brick

::Queue the Jeopardy theme song::

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Ok, well if you chose “D” you are absolutely correct! Great Job.

I applied my EasyWeed™ Electric Silver Lens  first.

Then applied my Royal StripFlock.

Lastly, I applied my Brick.

This application order allowed each material type to get the pressure it needed to adhere properly. Working from the thinnest heat transfer vinyl to the thickest will ensure proper pressure on each material. If you want to learn more about accurate pressure, check out my previous blog post: The Only Way To Handle Pressure Is To Apply It.

Right after I made this shirt, I read up on the interwebs that Napster is actually making a comeback!  The music streaming site, Rhapsody, is now Napster. Rhapsody’s services haven’t changed, but their new name will affect their branding and marketing.Talk about a crazy coincidence!

If you have any questions about this post, please feel free to leave them in the comment section or contact us at info@siserna.com

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