On Fridays We Wear RED - T-shirt Designs with Cricut

With two boys in the Air Force, a nephew headed to basics soon, and one of our sons spending 9 months deployed in Africa, with a family the size of ours - I've made a LOT of RED shirts.  We all have at least one or two. Or four.   Pretty much everyone I know now has one or two.  They are quick and simple to make, and pretty cheap too.

So I often get asked where I got the designs.  And I admit, they are not my idea.  I've seen them all over.  I have no idea who the credit should go to for the originals.  I'd love to credit the "creator" - but even for the one I bought on Etsy, I later found another woman offering it for free on a facebook group, claiming it was her design.  I tend to believe her, but I could be wrong.  She was not the person selling it on Etsy.  It was pretty shocking to me, the first time I learned that people take free designs from facebook shared files and sell them on Etsy.  I've now seen it so many times that I try not to buy anything on Etsy unless I know the designer actually created it.

With all of that said, here is how to recreate these designs, and then I shared a few more ideas I have not made myself, but should be somewhat easy to recreate.    I don't know what trouble you might find yourself in if you try to sell these designs - do your own research, do not trust me - too much is at stake, and I have no idea what I am talking about. :-)

This is how I made each of these designs:

Fonts are Stencilla & Berlin Sans

Soldier silhouette

Rectangle is W 10.361 x H 3.125

Slice

Step by Step Directions:

• Fonts are Stencilla & Berlin Sans

I found the soldier by googling "kneeling soldier silhouette"

Upload the silhouette to design space, use the magic wand  and click on the white space to make it all disappear.  Now you have just a black silhouette.  

Here's an example of how that is done:

For silhouette images like this, simple works fine.  Choose that.

The wand (top left) is selected by default.  Click on the gray box around the apple, and it turns to a grid. The grid means it is transparent - you now have just the shape of the apple.

• Create a rectangle

Use the shapes tool on the far left.  

Choose the square.

At the top of your screen, click on the lock so that it unlocks.

Resize to W 10.361 x H 3.125

Type your text, add the soldier in the space where the R would be, and then you have options.  You CAN just select attach.  This will make it look like one black rectangle, but it WILL cut the letters and soldier shape out of the box.  I use this option frequently for quick designs.  But because this is a design I use a lot, and I want to see the actual design each time i use it, I slice for this one.

To slice, first select the F and the Soldier silhouette, and the rest of the word - iday.  Now with all of that, but NOT the rectangle, selected, choose weld.  Place the welded image over your rectangle (I usually change the welded image to a color like white, so it can be seen clearly) and then select the welded image and the rectangle and choose slice.

WIth slice, you have to drag a few parts away.  There will be the white layer you started with - drag that away and delete it, and then there will be another layer of black that was cut out of the rectangle - drag that away and delete it as well.

Repeat the same slicing process with the words you want cut out of the word RED.    Don't forget to weld your words before attempting to slice.  Slice only works with two images at a time, and each letter is considered it's own image in design space, unless they are welded into one image.

For this one, it's just simple lines of text.  I explain how to slice in the last design, I won't repeat that here.  Type ON in it's own text box, and then rotate it sideways.  Super simple design!

The Fonts:

ON - Bernard MT

Fridays - Arial Black

We Wear - Skitka Banner

RED - Arial Black

This is my favorite design, and the one I can't really tell you how to recreate.  You could look for the images of the boots and the flag and try to slice them together yourself...  or if you look on Etsy, I'm sure someone is selling it.  Whether or not they have the right to sell it, I can't tell you.  It can also be found in the shared files of most cricut facebook groups, but they can be so tedious to sort through...  it might be faster to try to create something similar on your own?  I'm sorry - wish I could be more help!

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These are a few more designs I saved from pinterest to recreate on my own later:

This particular graphic is from a side called Nellie Crafts N Things, as you can tell by the watermark. ( I've seen it on a variety of sites.  )  A google search for :"Nellie Crafts & Things" did not help - I couldn't find the site this actually came from.  It would be pretty simple to recreate something similar with a few soldier silhouettes.  

I like this idea a lot - especially for Navy moms...  I haven't attempted to make my own version yet.  The flag here would be a nightmare to weed..  I'd find a ship without a flag, or with a more solid flag, I think, if I were to make this one...

Something I have seen, but not tried - instead of having the maching cut the "distressed" design, have it cut normal images, then take a pedi egg over it to distress it once it is cut and weeded (but before ironing it on the shirt)

I think one of my kids sent this to me - but they obviously have more faith in my abilities than I do.  :-)

This shirt is for sale here:

https://www.neatoshop.com/product/R-E-D-Remember-Everyone-Deployed