My Little
Einstein bootleg project (for Chance’s upcoming birthday) has been coming
along nicely. I managed to hack together
a nice looking invite (understand I’m not a graphic artist so it’s a learning process every time I do a new
project – but I’m getting better! (and I’ve worked with graphic artists in the
past so I’m picky)), I’ve got layouts ready for t-shirt iron-ons, and I had
planned to do stickers but instead I found… MAGNET PAPER! This stuff is so cool! You put it through your regular printer and
then cut the magnets to shape. I kid you
not! I am so excited I must have turned
into one of those crafty moms along the way somewhere. Actually, what’s kind of cool (again, “cool”
seems to be the word of the day) is how many craft projects you can do without
having any talent whatsoever! (And this
is from someone who believes she has a modicum of craft talent, seeing as how
I’ve done jewelry work for years.) But
seriously, there are all these new products at the craft or office supply store where you can
make nice looking stuff without a huge learning curve. It’s very empowering. And chuck full of short-term gratification
goodness.
So I thought I’d share a few images to date. What I’m ultimately planning for my lovely Little
Einstein’s themed birthday bash is to have goody bags that have a t-shirt for
each kid plus some magnets, and with an Einstein sticker on the bag. Otherwise, I’m just going for some of the
Little Einstein colors, you know, red and blue tablecloths, cutlery, etc. I figure the t-shirts and magnets are plenty
of project work for the moment. No
reason to kill myself. Plus, these kids
are two… they’re happy without a whole lot of gewgaws. OH! AND one of our friends who has just opened her own bakery catering
company is making us a cake that looks like Rocket!! My friends
ROCK! They really do.
Anyway, here are some images. Please excuse the poor quality here. I originally grabbed and saved all images as TIFFs
and after hacking my way around Photoshop and Illustrator to create print layouts I
was too lazy to go back and resave the original images back to jpgs for posting
here, so I just made screenshots from my layout files. Which is… *cough*… pretty much like making
copies of copies. Um… which is one of
the reasons why I’m not a graphic artist. But my files print great! Trust
me.
T-shirt Iron-On (we’re
still debating the final text message)
My magnet set for the kids. (Please ignore the extra blue lines – those are for layout purposes and
don’t print. I told you guys I was feeling lazy!)
Fun assorted images.
Email me if anyone else is interested in files for
print (as I know I can’t be the only parent out there whose kid is nuts for the Little Einsteins). Bootlegging is so much fun!
– the
weirdgirl
Oh, Oh, I love the shirts! Did you make one for me? LOL
Awesome stuff!
you’re so cool. 🙂 I know my daughter would be thrilled to have that kind of stuff at a birthday party. She loves Little Einsteins. You know why I love them? they taught her to go allegro
You are probably saving yourself a TON of money!
I’m taking notes for next year. Gabe already had his birthday party at the beginning of February, but this is a fantastic idea for next year! No matter the character!
I don’t think I’m saving any money (I think the Ts are coming out to about $3.50 a pop, so for a favor that’s kind of up there) but it’s a really fun project and I think the kids will get a kick out of it. And it’s amazing how easy it is to make this stuff!
For anyone interested… there is a program called SnagIt by TechSmith that you can download for about $40. This program lets you grab images off the web and do some editing, like add borders, words, flip images for iron-ons, etc. I did most of my layouts in Photoshop and Illustrator because I’m familiar with those, but I think I could have just as easily did them in SnagIt. Anyway, what I did was grab the images I wanted, saved them as TIFF (or EPS) for a high print quality and then just bought the iron-on transfer paper and magnet paper at the office supply store. I also found a great site online (www.cheapestees.com)where I bought T-shirts as low as $2.50 each. One thing I did learn was that the quality of the T-shirt and the transfer paper does make a difference in the quality of the iron-on. Not that I bought the cheapest of the cheap, but my “test” materials came out differently from my end product because they were different brands. If you want something really primo spend the extra cash on the transfer paper they sell at the craft store and get a good quality T. Enjoy!
I like it! Very creative and original idea. How many people are you having over?
Nice weekend
Thanks! We’re having about 12-15 kids and 35 adults. At least that’s what we’re planning for. (At this time of year you can just as easily have half your party catch colds at the last minute. That’s happened with a couple of the other kids in Chance’s playgroup.)
This project was a lot of fun. I think I needed some short-term gratification… it seems like all our other projects (finding a house, writing a book, planning for a second kid) are VERY long term!