T-shirt Fundraisers for a Pawsome Cause!

The t-shirt business is incredibly versatile. Whole businesses can be built on spirit wear, monogramming, or special occasions such as birthdays or weddings- just to name a few! Another avenue to consider is fundraising t-shirts. Awareness walks, mission trips, and sororities or fraternities use t-shirts to meet their monetary goal. An easy way to boost those vital t-shirt sales is to offer one design with two different color styles.

Men and women usually have different ideas in mind when they image the fundraising shirt they’d like to wear. Men are more inclined to muted colors while women have been known to gravitate towards bright colors and flashy embellishments. With that in mind I designed a pair of fundraising t-shirts for an animal shelter. It’s common for shelters to be non-profit, therefore t-shirts sold at local events, online, or in the shelter could help fund their needs.

I used Cricut Design Space to create this simple design, with the exception of the “O”s that look like a cat and a dog. I had to make those in Adobe Illustrator and then upload the SVG files to Cricut Design Space. When creating men’s and women’s designs remember that men’s designs will usually be bit a wider depending on the t-shirt you plan on transferring it to. My men’s design was 2 inches wider than the women’s.

When the design was ready I set up my heat transfer vinyl for cutting. I placed the carrier side (this will be the glossiest side) face down on the standard cutting mat. Siser Squeegees are usually used with our Print and Cut material, but they also work great to remove any air bubbles between HTV and a cutting mat.

Load the mat into the Cricut, but before you press “Go” make sure the “mirror for iron on” box is checked. While the “Iron On” stop on the Cricut Dial was perfect when we had an older blade, the new blade will cut right through to your mat. We only want the HTV material to be cut, not the carrier or cutting mat, so make sure to try out a test cut with a small shape before cutting your whole design. I ended up using the “Vinyl” setting for EasyWeed, “Paper +” for EasyWeed Stretch, and “Vinyl+” for Glitter.

When everything is cut, I grabbed my Siser weeder and removed all the bits of vinyl that aren’t in my design.

On to heat application!

Gray EasyWeed is used for the lettering besides “LOVE” and the cat and dog shaped “O’s”, those are Silver EasyWeed Stretch.

The men’s design can be made in one press because both materials are from the EasyWeed family. I set the heat press to 305°F with medium pressure. Then I pre-pressed the garment for 2-3 seconds. This will release any wrinkles or moisture that were in the shirt. After pre-pressing you can align the transfers with the carrier side face up. Cover the design with a heat transfer cover sheet and press for 15 seconds. Peel the carriers hot and the men’s t-shirt is done!

Purple EasyWeed Electric is used for the lettering and Confetti Glitter is used for the embellishments.

The women’s top takes two short presses. First press the EasyWeed Electric for a 1 second tack and peel the carrier hot. Next, raise the heat press temperature to 320°F and the pressure to firm. Add the Glitter transfers, cover with a cover sheet, and press for 15 seconds. Remove the shirt from the press and wait a few moments before peeling the Glitter carrier.

Two very different t-shirts with one design!

Can you tell I made Joe’s shirt first? His alignment is a little off, oops! Instead of a mistake I called it practice and aligned the second shirt better ;P

Have you made any fundraising t-shirts? Tell me about them in the comments!