In which I decide it would be a good idea to make my own t-shirt

How are there people in this world who do this? All the time? For fun???

I have never met a more nerve-wracking and stressful activity that I wanted to flee from.

A month ago my book club decided it would be super awesome to all see THE HUNGER GAMES together. Obviously this was the good decision.

Then we thought (and alcohol may have influenced this decision), “wouldn’t it be even MORE awesome if we had HUNGER GAMES themed t-shirts?”

Then once I was sober I actually promoted and encouraged this idea. WHAT?!

We could have just bought shirts, but no, we had to be cool and customize them.

Here’s the part where I must have lost my mind. I thought this would “easy” and “fun” and that I could pull it off no problem. I figured, why not? People do this all the time. It can’t be that hard. It’s probably easy. The packaging always shows pre-teens looking snazzy and hey I want to look snazzy so let’s do it!

So with about 0 pieces of information I set out on a dangerous mission. Let's just say the odds were definitely NOT in my favor.

First I needed I t-shirt. This was the first and last “easy” part of this project. Michaels sells these by the dozen in a variety of colors. Done. Next, transfer paper. There are like 50 kinds of transfer paper out there. Why do they make that decision so hard?? Why can’t there be “one-type-print-all” paper?? I finally just picked the one that was on sale for dark transfers for my black t-shirt.

Now a friend of mine already made a super awesome design for me. So I skipped out on that headache. I waited two days after I bought my transfer because I was too scared to print on it. After reading the instructions about 20 times, I loaded the paper, set my printer settings and hit “print.” While my computer whirred and made noises, I sat with fingers crossed and prayed for success. Within seconds I was greeted with an unenticing clicking noise that alerted me that something was not right. Apparently I have a fancy printer that has two trays to load paper. Since I was printing on the photo paper settings I had to put the paper in the back tray. I didn’t even know there was a tray there!

Take two, everything sounded great and I was sure I was on way to success. UNTIL MY PRINTER WENT DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE AND ALL MY COLORS CHANGED.

Here is the original design:

Awesome, right? Killer quote. Blood-red letters. perfection. And my printer created this:

 #&%()#*&%)@&#%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHY ARE THE WORDS PURPLE???? And did I follow instructions to make a “test sheet???” of course not!!! That’s my first page of my transfer paper now bearing a pinky/purple HUNGER GAMES quote. I cannot go to the HUNGER GAMES movie wearing pink letters. It kind of mocks the whole “this is serious and about death” aspect.

My first train of thought is, “oh just adjust the contrast on your computer. That will fix it!”

Wrong:

(on test paper now)

How about trying the other side of the contrast scale? Nope

Maybe I’m just out of red ink. Grayscale should work. Not as creepy looking but still serious.

WHY IS MY GRAYSCALE BLUE???

I just don’t even. Argh.

  

Thank goodness I still live at home and very few qualms about mooching off my parents and using their printer.

YAY!!! It looks so pretty and awesome!!

Now I just have to cut it out and iron this stuff to my shirt. This is the piece of cake part…right??