Bootleg Fallout 4 T-Shirts With a Vinyl Cutter. Aka Gun Runner Shirts

So I am WAY too excited about fallout 4 coming out.... Its going to be so awesome i can taste it.

anyway, i was thinking of how to use the Silhouette Portrait for the latest #buildnight and then it hit me.

Make fallout 4 t-shirts. Sure i could buy them, but they won't ship till the 15th July (5 days from now). oh and they cost money and I'm broke, they also don't have the sizing i needed for the whole family.

This project cost 15usd. about 3usd each for the 4 shirts and about another 2.50usd for the fabric paint.

Hackerspace Charlotte had some vinyl scraps and transfer tape.

Read on to make your own shirts. I have not included the files i used to try to stay within fair use of the logos used, but they can be found on google images here: Google Images

The trick is to find logos that are easy to trace with the trace tool. black lines on white is about the best option.

Step 1: Gather Materials

Needed:

Vinyl Cutter/ Silhouette Cutter

http://www.silhouetteamerica.com/shop/machines/por...

Computer

Vinyl (any colour will do)

Transfer tape (more on this later)

Fabric Paint:

http://www.michaels.com/tulip-soft-fabric-paint-ma...

Paint brush

Scissors

Tape measure

T-Shirts or other fabric(wash as per instructions on your fabric paint) we got ours at Michael's for 3usd each:
http://www.michaels.com/short-sleeve-adult-t-shirt...

Optional (but suggested):

Hook Tool (helps removing bits)

Scraper tool (for cleaning the cut mat)

Step 2: Make Your Design

So once you have picked a logo it needs to be traced (this is assuming you don't already have a vector logo.)

for this i used the Trace tool in Silhouette Studio. The trace bitmap in Inkscape does a similar thing.

this allows the cutter to know what lines it needs to cut.

i found it traced it with shadow, so i edited the vector points and removed the insides.

the trace tools can be a bit strange sometimes so just tweak the settings until it looks close.

for the 111 on the back i just created my own 111 and tweaked the font spacing to look close.

Step 3: Cut It Out

We test cut the designs out of card 1st to check we had the sizes right then cut the vinyl.

once that is done remove the unwanted parts of the vinyl with the hook tool or your nails.

remember we are making a paint stencil so we need an out line not the insides.

once you have removed the unwanted parts apply the transfer tape.

Why you ask, 2 reasons:

1) to make sure any parts of the sticker that are not connected to the outside stay in the right place.(the hole in the a in the fallout logo for instance)

2) to add some rigidity when placing the vinyl on the piece.

Step 4: Stick and Paint

Now it is time to stick the vinyl sticker to the fabric. Make sure you have prepped your t-shirt as per the fabric paint instructions. mine wanted it pre-washed and dried.

Put a piece of card between the front and back of the shirt. this stops the paint seeping onto the front.

test align it to get it where you want. then remove the backing and stick. you can adjust it some but not much as it will loose its sticky and could cause paint seepage. this was much easier with the ones with backing tape.

if you use backing tape be careful as you remove the tape as the bond to the fabric may be weaker than that of the tape.

we then put pressure on it for about 10-20 seconds to help make sure it stuck on. then paint gently.

Don't use too much paint on this step as you don't want it to seep under the vinyl.

The dry time for my paint was 4 hours so we left it over night and did the other side.

we found each part needed 2 coats of paint, so 16hrs dry time total.

Step 5: Remove ​stencil

here you just gently remove the vinyl and it should look crisp, if you have seepage around the edges then the vinyl didn't stick well.

don't expect perfection,high detail and small images will not come out well in this method.

Step 6: Enjoy Your Work!

This whole thing cost less than 15usd for 4 t-shrits and took an one evening to make the shirts plus about 3x 15mins for recoats, not including paint dry time.

The Sapphire blue t shirts were just the right colour but they only has kids small and adult medium in stock.

this method could be used for all kinds of shirts and designs.

Vote for me if you like this.

Raptor