Impressions - Team & Spirit Apparel - Fall 2014 - 10

* An easy way to add
value to a shirt is to
add mascot footprints. By adding paw
prints to this shirt, it
allowed me to boost
the asking price by
$4 to $5 per paw. It
turned a $27 shirt
into a $47 one. Photo
courtesy of Divine
Bling.

At the most basic level, you're looking at templates, a cutter,
adhesive, a tray and brush, a heat press and, of course, rhinestones. Stock templates, or fonts with holes for the stones, can
be purchased precut or downloaded, or you can buy software
to create your own.
Programs are available that enable you to take a "clean"
customer-supplied JPG and digitize it to create a template. The
software is fairly intuitive and there are training videos, but it
really takes time, patience and an interest in getting to know
the program. Learning design software is not easy, even for the
most tech-savvy person. Every time I think I'm getting pretty
proﬁcient at something, I ﬁ nd a cool, new technique to learn
and practice.
Although tweaking ready-made templates is more costeffective for some jobs, the software lets you really tackle the
custom business. If someone only wants a shirt to say "Soccer
Mom" and for the "o" to be a ball, you just need to select a suitable font, type in the words, ﬁ nd a vector in the shape of the ball
and ﬁ ll or outline it, and tweak the design to make sure that the
spacing between each stone is correct and the ﬁ ll looks good.
Or if someone sends a picture of a logo, you can either use
your own vector software or send the image to a company that
will make it a vector for you for a nominal fee. Obviously, you
mark the cost up a bit and charge your customer for that service, especially if it's a small order.
But whether the software costs $50 or $2,000, it only can do
so much. Editing ﬁ ne-tunes the design, imparting your personal style and often creating a more pleasing look by inserting
a human element into the equation.
The design then goes to the cutter, where a template with
holes for the rhinestones is created on template material, like
Sticky Flock. A "weed box" is cut around the graphic so you
don't need to use scissors when peeling it off the sheet. (This
also helps in registering multicolor job templates, which are
10 * Fall 2014

created by selecting areas for individual colors of stones on the
overall design, then duplicating them with the identical weed
box and dropping out all but one color on each template so
they can be layered.)
The template is then peeled off its backing sheet, leaving the
centers of the cut circles behind. Next it is afﬁ xed to a board
that is covered with more template material and has a lip at
the bottom. The rhinestones are poured over it and brushed
into the holes. The ﬂat (bottom) side of the stones sticks to the
adhesive. When rhinestones have been inserted into each template, transfer tape is placed over the completed design. It is
then applied to the garment with a heat press.
Rhinestones are available in a range of sizes, the most common being SS6 (2mm), SS10 (3mm), SS16 (4mm), and SS20
(5mm). SS10s are a good general-purpose choice and account
for at least 95% of the stone sizes.
Dozens of colors are offered as well. Typically, the most
popular are crystal clear, sapphire, light siam (red), emerald
green, citrine and light Colorado topaz. Order the colors of the
schools and teams you plan to sell to, plus crystal clear.
Different quality rhinestones also are available. Polished
machine-cut stones are more expensive, but they brush in
more easily and glue more consistently. I only use premium
machine-cut rhinestones for that reason (unless I'm making
children's shirts, in which case I use the highest-quality leadfree rhinestones) and I charge accordingly. You don't necessarily need to go for the highest grade, but using premium stones
can make a difference that catches customers' eyes - and
that's what bling is all about.

Stephanie Cooper is the owner of Divine Bling, a decorated
apparel shop specializing in rhinestones. You can contact Stephanie
at skcooper@divinebling.com, on her website at divinebling.com or
her Facebook page at facebook.com/divinebling.rhinestones.

http://www.divinebling.com http://www.facebook.com/divinebling.rhinestones

Impressions - Team & Spirit Apparel - Fall 2014

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