I ♥ Sunglasses

Heart shaped sunglasses look life-like in Brick and Holographic

Made famous by the 1960’s film, Lolita, red heart shaped sunglasses have been a trendy accessory ever since. Many celebrities have been seen rocking variations of the iconic eye wear such as Katy Perry in her music video, “This is How We Do.” Taylor Swift looks sweet and sassy as always in red heart shaped sunglasses in her music video, “22”. Lana Del Rey goes so far to even sing about heart shaped sunglasses in her song “Diet Mountain Dew” while wearing Lolita inspired shades. This summertime trend isn’t only enjoyed by singers though, actresses Zooey Deschanel and Selena Gomez have also been spotted wearing heart shaped sunglasses. The list of celebrities goes on and on, but how do you get in on this timeless summer accessory?

With a faux sunglasses crop top! I combined Siser Brick and Holographic to create my own pair of faux Lolita lenses. This look is perfect for an everyday glasses wearing girl like me. I can’t wear non prescription sunglasses, but this crop top gives me the chance to partake in the summer trend and keeps my lens assisted vision 20/20.

To start, I edited my red heart sunglasses image in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to separate the lenses from the frames. Silhouette Studio does not support SVG files unless you have Silhouette Studio Designer Edition. However, I only have the basic edition, so I saved my image as a jpeg. I brought my two jpeg images into Silhouette Design Studio and traced them. I had to adjust the slider bar on the “High Pass Filter” setting to get the full, correct tracing of my frames. Then I re-sized the frames to be about 6 inches long and 3 inches wide. I based the lenses’ size off of the frames so they would fit right inside.

First I cut out my lenses using Siser Holographic heat transfer vinyl in the color black. When placing the material on the cutting mat, the black side went face down, so the shiny silver backing was face up. In Silhouette Studio I went to “Cut Settings” and changed my material to “Heat Transfer Material Flocked.” Then I clicked “Send to Silhouette,” and sat back, relaxed, and let the cutter do its thing.

Next, I cut out some red Brick for the frames. Place the material glossy side down on the cutting mat before loading the material into the Silhouette Cameo. Cutting Brick on the Silhouette Cameo is made possible through the Deep-Cut Blade. You can read all about the cut settings for Brick in Joe’s previous post: Cut Siser Brick on your Silhouette Cameo.

After everything was cut, I took my Siser Weeder and removed the unnecessary material.

Once everything was weeded I headed over to the heat press and set it to 311°. We recommend Brick be pressed at 311° for 5 seconds on the front of the material, flip the garment inside out, and then apply heat for another 15 seconds on the adhesive side. Holographic should be pressed at 320° for 10-15 seconds, but because I’ll be layering the Brick over it, I’m going to keep my temperature at 311° and only apply it for 5 seconds. This is will tack down the Holographic HTV for now, until I heat apply the Brick which will firmly adhere Holographic to the garment as well.

I used a heat transfer pillow to raise my design above the hem and sleeve seams. Doing this creates even pressure so my design will be adhered firmly on all parts. A heat transfer cover sheet is always necessary to top everything off before heat applying. Keep in mind, Holographic and Brick are cold peels so they need to cool down before removing the carrier sheet.

The whole process went like this: I tacked my Holographic lenses for 5 seconds, waited till the carrier was cool, peeled the carrier off, placed my Brick frames on top, heat applied for 5 seconds, flipped the crop top inside out, heat applied for the full 15 seconds, waited till the carrier was cool, peeled and here you have it. A trendy crop top just in time for summer!