Rhinestone Owl Shirt

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

I’ve got another owl shirt tutorial up on the Silhouette America blog today.  This time it’s a rhinestone owl shirt for daughter #2.  She helped me position all the rhinestones in the right place (we used four colors).  Originally posted on the Silhouette blog, now you can read all the details below.

Do you need a little more bling on your apparel? How about the little girls in your life? My eight-year old daughter helped me make this rhinestone owl shirt, and we had a lot of fun in the process.

I’ve been collecting a variety of rhinestone colors to make a multi-color design like this with Silhouette’s rhinestone material. All of Silhouette’s rhinestones have a heat-activated glue on the back, so once the design is in place all you need is an iron to make it stick to your fabric (and yes, it’s washable!).

1-      Choose a rhinestone design in the online store and open it in Silhouette Studio. My daughter chose this owl. This one requires mostly 10ss rhinestones (the smallest) and a few of the 20ss (largest) rhinestones. We didn’t have the right color of the largest stones, so we just used the 16ss (medium) size in those large holes, which actually worked just fine. Never resize a rhinestone design on your Studio workpage.

2-      Place your rhinestone material on a cutting mat (it has a backing so you can cut without a mat, but I really prefer to use my cutting mat with this material) and load it into your Silhouette machine. You may want to try cutting several test holes on a scrap piece and adjust your cut settings as necessary to get a clean cut before committing a larger piece for the real design.

3-      Cut the rhinestone material with your Silhouette, then trim it down (if you haven’t already) and peel the backing away from the flocked (or older blue) rhinestone material. Expect to deal with a few of those pesky little circles that want to stay with the bigger design, but hopefully most will come away easily. You may want your “little helper” to pick all those circles out for you. 😉

4-      Place the sticky template material to a rhinestone backing board, which is simply heavy cardboard. You’ll save this template for using as many times as you want to recreate the same rhinestone design.

5-      Gently brush the rhinestones into the template holes using the fuzzy brush in the rhinestone kit. For a multi-color design like this, you’ll need to work with one color at a time. We worked from the inside, out. I think the pick-me-up tool is a must-have for rhinestones! And this is where my “little helper” came in. I started the correct color of rhinestones for each section, but she made sure they were all in their proper place, right-side up. She thought she was pretty cool using my special pick-me-up tool.

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

6-      Once the rhinestones are all in place, place the rhinestone transfer tape on top of the rhinestones and lift the whole design out at once and place it on the shirt.

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

7-      Use an iron with a thin cloth between it and the transfer tape to iron on top of the rhinestones and activate the glue backing of the rhinestones. Start with a “wool” setting, and adjust hotter as necessary. Keep ironing until the rhinestones want to stick to the fabric instead of the transfer tape. (You’ll want to keep your “little helper” away from the hot iron.)

  • TIPS: Based on my experience, the rhinestones stick sooner and more securely to cotton/knit fabrics more than something like denim, but they do stick to denim with a little more heat and time.
  • The rhinestone transfer tape is heat resistant, so I’ve actually ironed directly on it without ever melting it (but be careful!).
  • Once the rhinestones are sticking to the fabric pretty well, I flip the garment inside-out and iron on the back side to make sure the glue is sealing well to the fabric.
  • I usually let it cool before pulling the transfer tape away completely. If some of the rhinestones still stick, you need to iron some more.

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

I hope you found this tutorial helpful for adding some colorful sparkle with rhinestones to your kids’ clothes. It’s a great activity to do some “bonding” together! 😉

Don’t these sisters look cute sporting their DIY-decorated owl shirts?  In case you missed my tutorial for using stencil vinyl and fabric inks for this other owl, you can find it HERE.

Rhinestone Owl Shirt by Kelly Wayment

Shapes Used:

Owl (design ID #10488)



2 thoughts on “Rhinestone Owl Shirt”

  • Adorable! Do you mind sharing where you got the cute blank girl tees? I'd like to make some with my girls. Thanks! ~Vera

    • Hi Vera. These shirts came from Walmart. They often have blank tees that are great for decorating. Another place I like for blank shirts is The Children's Place, although it depends on the season as to whether you can find appropriate shirts at the time you're looking.

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