The main inspiration for this personal project was the fact when I walk my dogs to parks and such, people can't seem to guess what breed they are. The weirdest one I heard was that my dogs are "bulldogs". I laugh it off, of course. But it's a good thing I've experienced it many times because the idea to make this shirt just hit me.

 

Below you'll see the process of making the shirt. I didn't want to spend too much on getting it printed, since it's for personal use. So I just DIY-ed it with the help of my sister. You'll also see the end product below and what else I did with the design.

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So I know the feel of the design once I make the real thing! And so that you can see a close-up of the designs.

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After printing it out on normal printer paper, I did a mockup of where to cut and where to skip. I had to make tabs on the designs in order for everything to stick together. So I penciled it on my printer paper mockups before printing the designs on OHP film and then started cutting out my stencil. 

 

I actually just found out that the OHP/Acetate film I bought last year was for Inkjet printer too! And to think I've been using it on a Laserjet and was worried because it ran out of ink. I only realized it when I was looking at the packaging plastic of the OHP.

It was a coincidence that the right side design OHP misprinted the area of printing due to wrong settings. So it fit snugly under the left side design.

It was my first time trying to cut through OHP film. It was hard to manoeuver on the small round corners of the details, but it was sturdy. And also, my 2-year-old X-Acto knife finally gave up on me. The red plastic tubing cracked, it's still usable but I can't tighten the screw and the blade keeps falling out.

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Work In Progress: Printing

Due to my work, I couldn't do this in time for Halloween with our dogs. So my sister helped me paint them and take photos. So it's really all thanks to her. Haha!

 

With a sponge, small brush, and a barbecue stick (to hold the stencil), we used black fabric paint on the shirt. And the consistency of the paint was a little gloopy, so it was hard.

You can see with the stencile that there are gaps, those are the tabs I was talking about. It holds the inner shapes together with the whole stencil.

I later on filled the gaps with the small brush. I just eyeballed it. And I practically memorized the stencil after staring at the design for weeks.

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We made two shirts, for me and then for my sister. Who, by the way, modelled for me with our two amazing American Akitas, Zara (white) and Hugo (red pinto black mask)!

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Since I loved how the Akita head turned out, I also did branding for my Akitas' Instagram, @zaraandhugo. I change the color, pattern, and background if there's any occasion, like Halloween.