DIY Layered Vinyl Harry Potter T-Shirts

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These layered vinyl Harry Potter T-Shirts are easy to make with your Silhouette Cameo and the Designer Edition of the Silhouette Studio Software!

These Harry Potter t-shirts are brought to you by ShirtSpace, but the content and opinions are that of Simply Made Fun.

If there is one thing I will always regret it’s not making more Harry Potter t-shirts to wear to the midnight release of the books and movies.

Back then making t-shirts meant using puffy paints and mad drawing skills and hoping and praying that your shirt came out looking somewhat like you pictured in your head. Mine never did, I’m a terrible artist.

This is why I’m thankful for cutting machines. They make crafting easy and quick!

Which is awesome and also a bit dangerous.

My obsession with making t-shirts is ~~maybe~~ a little unhealthy.

I love working with heat transfer vinyl (it’s so easy to weed!) and using my Cricut EasyPress makes cranking out shirts really fast.

It also helps because there’s no guessing as to how long you need to press your designs for. There’s an easy guide on their website that tells you exactly how long you should press your designs depending on what material you’re pressing them on to. It literally takes the guess-work out of it for you!

The only time you wouldn’t want to go by that guide is if you’re pressing multiple layers (like you would with the Ravenclaw shirt). For multiple layers you would press the first layer for 15-20 seconds and do each layer after that for only 5-10 seconds.

Want to make sure your shirts look their best? Grab the HTV Placement and Sizing Guide!

Are you doing a complicated layered design? Read on for tips on how to get it right the first time!

How do you get the Silhouette Software to cut out multiple colors without having to go in and ungroup/unclick everything?

The Silhouette Designer Edition really helps in multi-layer designs because you can cut by color or layer. This made it really easy to cut my son’s Ravenclaw shirt because all I had to do was change out the vinyl on my cutting mat, click the color I wanted to cut in the software, and hit cut.

Do you need the Silhouette Designer Edition to cut layered designs?

No, not at all. It does make it easier but it is not a necessity.

How do you line up the layers correctly when pressing multiple layers of vinyl?

Honestly, I eyeball it. I know that most people like a more technical answer than that but eyeballing it is what I do.

However, if you want a more full proof plan you should do all three of these things:

Fold your shirt in half and iron a crease down the middle.
Add small boxes above and below your design in the Silhouette software, directly in the middle.
After you cut your layers (make sure you cut the boxes with each layer) gently fold the design in half (don’t crease the vinyl, just your transfer sheet!). Use the boxes as your guide then remove them before putting your vinyl on the t-shirt. Use the crease on your shirt to line up the vinyl design.

If you do all of these things I have no doubt that your shirts will look 100 times better than mine typically do. I rush and therefore not everything of mine is straight. I really should get better about that…?

Will the vinyl shrink when it’s pressed?

It can and I have done it before! When that happens it definitely looks like your design is off.

To help stop this from happening you should only press for a short amount of time with each layer!

What happens if I screw up and ruin the vinyl?

Well, that’s exactly what happened with my Luna shirt! When I made the Luna shirt and accidentally put the hot iron on the already pressed vinyl when doing my second layer. It warped the vinyl and my shirt was ruined. I was bummed.

But….there is a way to remove vinyl (easily) if you mess up! I wrote a whole post about the $20 miracle bottle that’ll remove vinyl from a shirt so you can start over! I wish I had that when I was making these shirts.

If you’re still a little worried about trying more than two layers (the Ravenclaw shirt was three!) find a simple design and start there. But make sure you have your bottle of miracle remover with you, just in case!

These Harry Potter T-Shirts are:

easy,
fun, and
incredibly nerdy!

Let’s make our own layered vinyl Harry Potter T-Shirts!

Harry Potter Shirts

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Active Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 20 minutes

Difficulty: Easy

Learn how to easily layer multi-colored vinyl Harry Potter T-Shirts with the Silhouette Designer software!

Materials

Tools

Silhouette Cameo
Cricut Easy Press

Instructions

Download the RAVENCLAW design and load it into your software. To figure out what size design you should cut, reference the HTV Placement and Sizing Guide.
Cut your design and weed it. Set it aside.
Heat up your Cricut EasyPress and fold your shirt in half. Check this site for the correct settings for your EasyPress.
Use your EasyPress to press the crease of your shirt. This is how you tell where the center line of your shirt is!
Place the design on your shirt and put a teflon sheet on top of it. Use the EasyPress to press your design on the shirt.
If you pull up the carrier sheet that is on top of your vinyl design and the vinyl pulls up with it, put the carrier and teflon sheet back on top of the vinyl and repress until the vinyl is fully pressed on the shirt.