New design - Spanish Skull or Sugar Skull

I am finally able to start work on designs that have rolling around in my head....And I will be posting step by step pics and such.

My first design is a Spanish Skull...I like to find out the background of most of my designs so I looked up Spanish Skull and found several entries as you can imagine.  One of them is that the Spanish Skull symbolizes the death of a compadre' due to gang violence or doing some work for his "hood".
And of course it also symbolizes "The Day of the Dead" or Dia de los Muertos in Spanish. This is a holiday in Mexico where friends and family gather to remember those who have died.


There are also "Sugar Skulls" which are very colorful and decorative...They are a skull shaped treat that is made of pure colored sugar and decorated, they are served during the "The Day of the Dead" or Dia de los Muertos (also the Mexican Halloween).  
I will consider most of my designs Sugar Skulls...To me a Spanish Skull is dark in nature...Most of my designs will be colorful and light...


So back to my first design...It is a Spanish Skull with Cherry Blossoms and a Cherry Blossom Limb.  I finished the design over the weekend and have begun to apply it on the shirt....


Day 1 of application:

This is the background...This is hand painted using flowable fabric die...So it actually permeates the fibers in the shirt and won't fade...Doesn't look like much now...Just wait til tomorrow !

Day 2 of application:

I pressed the cherry blossom on...This particular step took me 2 hours...But this is the first run of this particular design, so the next one won't take me as long...I think I may do a few shirts with just this design...It is very pretty! Tomorrow I am hoping to have the shirt complete!

2 Weeks after application...
I could not make the sugar skull look right....so my daughter talked me into leaving this shirt as is, and putting the sugar skull on a shirt by itself...

Here is the Sugar Skull...I apologize for the coloring...I was trying to show the rhinestones I added to the eyes.

Here is a bit of a closer pic...The pic does not do this shirt justice....I placed every single one of the hot fix rhinestones by hand. I am very pleased with the outcome.

Here is a pic with it on the shirt...This is not the shirt this will actually be pressed on to sell though...It is the same color...But the Shirt will be a Bella My Favorite T Tee...I still think there needs to be something behind this....Working on that project next.

A Little About Me and How Uncommon Threadz Came to Be

Welcome! and Thank you so much for stopping by!

This is my first blog post...Ever....so I will try and fumble along and do the best I can, so please bear with me.

My name is Wendy Northern.  I am the wife of 16 years to my middle school and high school sweetheart...Which these days is definately not the norm.  I am also the mother of 3 beautiful daughters, my oldest is 15, and I have 5 year old twins.  They all keep us hopping and on our toes.  We live in a small town about 50 miles South of Dallas.

I have always been crafty...to some degree.... But not many of the things I have tried to do held my attention very long... I am very good at cross stitching and worked on one piece for over a year...I think that burned me out.  I love to stencil and decorate my girls rooms...But again...these were all just fleeting fascinations.

As I got older and my girls are now very picky with what they wear, I have to be a little more frugal.  I was out shopping one day and saw all these cute cute shirts with all these cute designs.  Now I have been seeing these for quite some time, but would just dump them in my basket and go on.  But this particular day I actually really really looked at the shirt and the design.  I flipped it inside out to see what the underneath looked like, and it was like an epiphany....I thought...I can do this!!! This is basically a heat pressed design!!!
The wheels started churning in my head and all the things I needed to do, and learn were spinning...
I knew the first thing I needed was an image editor/paint program that would allow all the designs in my head to come to fruition.  As I stated, we have to be frugal....I just didn't have the money to shell out for an expensive program...So the search was on for a comparable free one.  There are 3 that I looked into...and finally settled on one that would do absolutely everything I needed it to do....It is called: Paint.net....so if you are looking for something like that...that is the one to use. And I will try and put together a little basic tutorial to post at a later time.

The next step was to get a "Professional Heat Press"..... This is NOT an iron.  I did not want to sell shirts with "Iron-Ons"  They just don't last...So I found a heat press, and found a commercial grade heat transfer paper brand that comes very well recommended by professionals....I cannot stress enough here...My designs are not "Ironed on". 

After getting all the equipment I needed I designed my first shirt.

 My girls loved it...After much debate on a name for my shop...I finally came up with Uncommon Threadz.  Because the designs are not your everyday designs. 

My true passion is skulls and fairies...I love fantasy...The surreal backgrounds...Some very light and angelic...Others very dark and foreboding...You will be seeing a lot of this in my designs...

I had several requests from members of a swap site I am a member of for Birthday shirts for their kids, and I got very busy with those...But I have finally finished all those and can really start on what I want to do.  I worked on and completed a design with a Spanish Skull....Look for pictures of it coming up in the next few days...I will press it tonight and start embellishing with all the bling.
 
Thats all for me today...But keep looking for my latest designs!