Handyman's Handmade Presents

As I've stated several times earlier, Handyman and I share a birthday. Like most men, my Handyman is extremely hard to shop for. He has all the clothes he needs, he buys his own X-box games at prices I could never find, and generally is the most content human being on the planet. This is borne out by the fact that three weeks after desperately asking him what he wanted for his birthday, the only thing he could come up with was, "Cookies".

It hit me that he needed a few more fun T-shirts for wearing around town, and since he absolutely loves anything vintage Nintendo, I decided to try making him his own tee with iron-on photo transfer paper.

First, I googled an image online that I liked, and then I downloaded free Mario Brothers font. (Hopefully I'm not committing all sorts of copyright violations. They can't sue me because I have no money, so incarceration is their only option. I might like jail if they let me keep my knitting. Time to myself! Hmmmmmm, possibilities . . . . oh yeah, where was I?)

Anyway, I found a cheap $5 plain tee shirt at Walmart, and ironed on creases so that I'd be able to center my image. I could have used a water soluble pencil, but I'm low-tech and don't have anything like that. (I think I used to have one before it was confiscated for dinosaur art purposes. We must make sacrifices for art).
I carefully and painstakingly cut out every. single. letter. and then ironed them onto the shirt, doing my very bestest to keep the letters even. Thankfully the Super Mario Font is a bit wonky anyway, so I had some leeway. Unfortunately I didn't use the sharpest scissors as I should have, and I mangled one of the letters pretty badly. I told Handyman it was supposed to look like a bullet hole. Yup. Intentional distressing.
After the letters I ironed on my image, and I was done!
I think I'll need to give the shirt a quick vinegar/water bath to help the colors stay bright.

Handyman certainly seemed thrilled with his gift!
I made him one more shirt (this one was a lot easier, because the wording was part of the image.) It was a variation of the mushroom/Mario theme.
(Note: when you get an image off the internet and resize it, it will most likely lose its detail. I printed out the image in the size I wanted, and then re-outlined the image with a black permanent marker. After that, I copied the sharper image onto the photo-transfer paper.)