Creating great projects from digital products is easy! For example, my daughter’s birthday party was last week and we did an underwater theme. So my gifts to all the little guests were mermaid shirts with matching hair color for each girl. My daughter wanted to be an octopus, so I simply ironed-on an octopus illustration I made onto the simple costume I created for her (to see how to make the octopus costume, please visit the octopus costume post).

So here’s how I created this cute little gift idea.

1. I bought a package of Dark T-shirt transfers and a few t-shirts in blue and dark pink. I picked them all up at Target but many places would have these goods.

2. Choose an illustration from your favorite digital kit…stickers work best because they are png (no background). I used my Tiny Mermaid line for this project.

3. Print your illustration onto your Transfer Sheet (follow the instructions from the back of tha package.). I just used my inkjet printer at home and bought inkjet transfers. If you want to maximize space, create a 8.5″ x 11″ document in Photoshop and place several stickers to cut out.

4. Cut out your printed transfer VERY CAREFULLY. Because it is on a dark T-shirt, you will want to cut out all the white and get as close to the edge of your design. For example, on the octopus sticker, I had to cut out a couple of the legs seperately because they were seperate from the body and I didn’t want white to show up between the legs.

4. Follow you transfer paper instructions to iron on the design to the t-shirt. For mine, I laid down a pillow case on a hard surface and laid a sheet of paper (provided by the iron-on packet I bought) down over the t-shirt and ironed for 1-2 minutes.

And that’s it! I great project that my children adore and made Siri’s party special.

I finally finished a full week of photos! I’m really liking the Project 365 challenge because I am starting to get a sense of what kind of album I’m going to end up with this year. You can sort of see it in this layout—an album full of details, not just the big events and some real insight into what we do as a family.

The one thing that is going to be tricky is keeping the layouts neutral so that the photos shine. I’m using my Distressed White on White papers here. And just to make my life easier, I went ahead and finished out all my layouts ahead of time for the entire month of January so all I have to do is insert the photos and journaling.

One thing I’m noticing is that along with the 365, I want to do pullouts of events. So I created myself 4 layouts for multiple photos that are just for those events (siri’s birthday party, ice skating, and sledding). I wanted them to match my 365 layouts, so I used the Distressed White on White papers for them as well.

And if life is crazy, busy (when isn’t it?), you can just pick up my new January album (released today at 30% off) and insert your own photos without the hassle of actually making the layout. How easy was that?

I’m just glad that for the rest of January all I’ll be doing is snapping photos!

Want to check out my 365 challenge at DHD? Go here.

As for me, I’m working on getting together a new instruction pdf for you on how to make my easy-to-make octopus costume. Sounds silly? My six year old does have some silly demands and sometimes her mama gives in. Keep you posted!

It’s the opening of Design House Digital today. Check out the plethora of new products I have over there. Oh ya, and a couple of tutorials! Check out my clipping mask tutorial (you can also watch it below) and a little bit of design theory (a little lesson on the Golden Mean) to boot!

You might also want to check out the amazing 30% off sale going on at DHD this weekend on the ENTIRE shop. It’s a heck of a deal! Nice Grand Opening, eh?

I’m also pretty excited because my class at Jessica Sprague starts today!!!! Hooray for Illustrator 101!

I hope you are having a very happy first day of the year! I’m looking forward to 2010!

Check out today’s Warehouse Walk at 2peas with MellyPea. You’ll notice the awesome shout out by MellyPea for my new Spider’s Web line out in paper and just barely hitting stores! Oh, and digital folks, don’t think I have forgotten you on this one…just a few more weeks…