Vinyl Designs

Tweet It's staff development today at work, so I took advantage of a workshop being offered in using the vinyl cutter. The machine can cut into vinyl to be used for both window decals, and clothing applications. I've decided to show off both usages!

First off is my Billy Idol T-shirt. I've been after one for while but I never found one I liked. So I bought a blank white T-shirt from M&S and created this artwork using an album cover image in Photoshop. I brought it into Illustrator, used Live Trace, and then sent it to the vinyl cutter. I peeled away the parts now showing in white, and hot-pressed it onto the T-shirt. Cool, huh?

Next up is my vinyl window decal. I created this one using nothing but the Pen Tool and the Rotate Tool in Illustrator, and sent it to the vinyl cutter. I did actually get it slightly wrong as I wanted to have the outlines online, but I like how it turned out. I peeled away the inverse parts, added adhesive paper, and stuck it to the window of the print room. So simple!

Last but not least, I also had a go with the badge maker. I took an Illustrator design I'd done previously, of stylised cupcakes, and stripped the colour to leave behind only the outline. I printed this out and put it through the badge maker. If you like the pattern, you can find it at Spoonflower. I'm awaiting a test swatch and if it's good enough, I'll make it available for sale!