Valentine’s Day Shirts for Boys

I love making shirts for my boys, so I couldn’t resist coming up with something for Luke to wear to his Preschool Party. 

It took a while to think of a good idea for the design, but I saw phrase “Loads of Love” on a stamp once with a pick-up  truck and hearts falling out.  {I think it was a Stampin’ Up stamp that my friend had.}  So I found a good picture of a truck for an example and drew it in Photoshop and then added little hearts in the back and falling off the truck.  I used the font Lemondrop for the wording. 



Sam’s shirt was a bit trickier.  I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do.  I thought about “Heart Breaker” or “stud muffin” but wasn’t in love with either.  Then I thought of Love Boat!  Perfect!  Drew up a little boat and added some hearts to it also!  Decided to nix the actual wording—figured the boat with hearts is pretty self explanatory.  I will have to snap a picture of Sam wearing his shirt tomorrow—he was way too grumpy to attempt it today! 

I got these red t-shirts at Walmart for $3.88/ea and then washed them.  It’s important to wash them since they may shrink a little after the first wash.  Unless you plan never to wash the stenciled …

I cut the stencils using my Sure-Cuts-A-Lot program and my Cricut and I used Freezer Paper for the stencils.  Be sure to cut out the right side.  The shiny side is what gets ironed onto the shirt, so make sure the picture isn’t reversed when that side goes down.


Then a couple coats of Tulip Fabric paint and let it dry overnight. 

In the morning I carefully pulled off the freezer paper—the most annoying part.

I need to remember next time to make any skinny lines much thicker.  Skinny lines have a bigger tendency to bleed and are a lot harder to remove after you’ve painted.  I had some trouble with bleeding and getting the freezer paper off because of my skinny lines.



I’ve made the skinnier lines thicker in the downloads, so if you attempt these I’m hoping I’ve fixed the problem.

That’s it!  Cute shirts for my cute boys!



Now my Valentine’s Day gift to you…my files for these stencils! Hopefully you can figure out how to load these into your various programs and cut them with your electronic cutters.  I used SCAL with my Cricut…so if you don’t have those, I won’t be able to help you with any questions {I don’t know anything about the Silhouette, for example, so I can’t help you there!} I’ve made the skinny lines a bit fatter, so hopefully you’ll have a little better luck and not have any bleeding like I did!

Loads of Love
Love Boat

These files are for PERSONAL USE ONLY! You can not sell these images or use them for anything being sold.  Happy Valentine’s Day!!