I’ve uncovered the best craft hack & I can’t wait to share it (+ my big secret revealed)

I cannot believe it's taken us this long to uncover this hack. We are merging together some of our favorite types of crafting to bring together the most epic craft hack yet. I am so excited in this video to pull back the curtain on this brand new process that you are going to be obsessed with. And throughout the video, I'm going to share my big project, my big secret that I've been working on, y'all. I mean, seriously, this is huge. We are merging together so many different types of crafting. Cricut, DTF, screen printing, and so much more to make this one hat come together. And the cool part is it's going to be making more permanent hats and shirts than ever before with this new process. You want to stay tuned. What I love about this process is that it's going to merge together so many different elements. And I have a lot on the table for us to talk about. But here is the thing. Rest assure, if you are already a crafter, chances are a lot of the supplies you see on the table, you already have. The only thing different is this very, very specific little material right here. This is rapid cure plasol ink. And this is the secret weapon to making these shirts and hats come together like never before. But do you guys want to hear a little bit about my big secret? Y'all, we are hosting a festival. Yes, I said a virtual craft festival called CraftCon. And I thought, what better way to reveal and share it with the world for the first time ever than merging together a brand new craft hack that we're actually going to make merch for CraftCon. So whether you're a Makers Learn member, you can come or if you're just a friend of the channel, grab your ticket right down below and get inside so you can get this logo and start making merch right away before July 19th and 20th where we're go craft together all weekend long. Two jam-packed days. More on it later. In today's craft hack, we are going to merge together all of these different techniques and create some really fun transfers. This is the power of merging together all these different techniques. We are going to use the power of screen printing. Merge it together with some really, really neat DTF transfer film sheets and the DTF powder to make these really high quality transfers like never before. Think about screen printing on steroids. I'm excited to break down why you'll want to have this technique in your back pocket to make high quality prints like never before that are going to outperform heat transfer vinyl, sublimation, and all those other techniques. You will want to have this for high quality prints on shirts and hats. Now, before we get into everything that you need for this technique, I really want to take a second and explain to you that we tried this process using the least amount of material possible. So, we started using just our regular screen print ink. And if you check this out right here, we did a test. And the thing about this test right here is this is with regular screen print ink. And look at how horrible it turned out. You want to know the secret? This is a waterbased screen print ink. You do not need that. It will not work when it comes together, merging together the powders and the things to really make the transfer stick. This is what our results were when we were using regular um everyday screen print ink that you probably already have on hand. So, after we saw that the regular screen printing ink was simply not going to work, we were like, "All right, we need to buy the Rapid Cure uh plast ink." But here's where things got a little interesting. We started reading online, watching the videos, finding out and doing the research, and we're like, "Wait, everyone that is using stuff like this says you have to use their DTF powder, their transfers, their this, their like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're crafters and chances are they're just repackaging their own stuff, right?" You know what I'm saying? So, we only purchased this right here. We only purchased the plastic salt ink. Everything else is from the craft stash, which is super super cool. Um, and guess what? We were able to make it work. But I have to give you a forewarning before we dive into the process. Look what happens. We started getting it perfect right here. But the reason why it looks so bad is come to find out you cannot overpress. Just like with screen printing and other things like that, the amount of pressure and time that you press your item um is very important. So if you overpress, this is what you'll end up looking like. So, we're going to teach you the perfect way, the simplest way to make these transfers work every single time without a craft fill in today's video. And if you want to learn more about my big craft festival coming up soon, stick with me. All right, the first step that we need to do is we need to head over to Cricet Design Space. And when you grab your CraftCon ticket, you're going to get this file to make some merchandise of your own. Today we're thinking about making a pocket t-shirt or maybe just an awesome hat to celebrate and wear at CraftCon. So over here in Design Space, what we need to do is we need to bring the image in. So we brought our CraftCon logo in. You could work with any other image, of course. I like having an image that has, you know, thicker pieces so that we have a really good um image to work with and that we're not trying to kind of put together really really tiny screen prints. Um I'll zoom in here and you'll see that this logo is very thick fonts, thicker images, and this is going to allow us to have a really really incredible um result. So, the image you pick very much matters. All right. Now, my second word of advice, measure twice, cut once as always. So, today for our pocket tea or a hat, we're trying to make this open for either. The size we've chose is 2.7 by 2.9. That is going to give us a really nice, not too large, not too small size for the project at hand. Now, what I want to tell you is the magic is really after we press make it. So, we're go to press make it. And here's what I want to tell you. Sometimes with screen printing, you think that you would mirror your design. But guess what? With this process, once you see it come together in real life, you do not actually want to mirror. So, do not be messing with that mirror button. But what I want you to do is imagine getting a large piece of scrap vinyl. You want to have a large piece of scrap vinyl. And then I want you to move the CraftCon logo on the mat. I want you to move it more towards the center. My recommendation would be about 2 in down and you know significantly over on the sides. That way you're not worried about having to screen print in a really small area. For example, if you have in the top left corner, you would be very close to the edge. That makes me nervous. So, we're going to do two inches down and maybe four or five inches over from the side. All right. Now, this looks perfect. Be sure to use some scrap vinyl that you um have that you don't want to ever use or colors you have a lot of. The color does not matter. And the quality of vinyl really should just be a premium or just really high quality vinyl because that is going to make the transfer. This is not the time to pull out your Dollar Tree vinyl. Are you with me? All right. So, after you've set it up on Cricut Design Space, you want to select premium vinyl. And then look right here. We have it on our mat. And again, please use the scrap vinyl. Those big pieces, those big scraps are perfect for this project. So, what we're going to do is we're just going to load this into our machine and we are just going to go ahead and cut it out. All right, you can press the flashing play button and it's going to begin cutting out your stencil. [Applause] All right, so it's cut out. Let's go ahead and unload our mat. And here is the hardest part of the entire project. Our brain has been trained to weed the traditional way, which is removing all of the excess and leaving just the actual vinyl. Well, guess what? When you're making something like an amazing screen print or any stencil for that matter, you are going to have to remove all the pieces that you would traditionally leave. So, it's kind of like reverse weeding. That is what we're going to do today. So, we're going to dive in and we're going to remove all of the actual letters and things that would typically be printed. To make it easy, we're going to take a true control knife and cut off any excess that we really don't need. So, I'm just going to make a nice rectangle um square shape. Be sure to make it as wide as your screen printing will be. So, you don't want to have to worry about being really intentional and only using half. Go ahead and make it the size. So, mine, for example, is about six in wide. Go a little bit more than that. Go seven or 8 in. That way, your screen printing process is super super simple. So, we're going to cut that out first and then weed it. Now, let me give you a really neat weeding hack. It is going to be super super simple for this process. You are going to leave and then weed each layer. So, as you go through and look at it, I'll walk you through this really fun technique on how you can make sure you know what to weed and what to leave. All right, my friends. Here is how I want you to understand this process. You are leaving the outer edge, which means you're weeding this piece. Then we are leaving this outer edge and weeding the actual letter but leaving the inner A. Does that make sense? Let me go through and weed this and walk you through it. So, we're going to start by weeding this piece right here and then we'll come back. All right, my friends. We've weeded this piece right here. So, that means we're going to leave this, which means, guess what? We weed this right here, which is the outline of the letters. All right. So, we're just weeding this. This is the most nerve-wracking part because you're like, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to mess it up. I don't want to weed or, you know, have to recut." So, you want to go slow and really be articulate about this cuz for most of us, we're not used to crafting like this. Um, and it's really different. So, now you can see there's a few inner pieces, the O, the A, and the R. All right. We need to weed the iners of the R, the A, and the O, and then these bottom pieces, and then guess what? it will be ready to go. All right, so we've been able to weed this out and now we'll be ready to transfer it and apply it to the screen. All right, my friends, look at our mat right here. This is what it should be looking like. And now you want to grab whatever transfer tape you like to work with. So, I'm working with the Caesar one. Again, not my favorite, but my team loves it. So, here we are still using it. Um, we're just going to take it. And I do have to say it's a really good transfer tape. I don't know why I am so against it. We are going to do throwback time. The taco method. How many of you guys remember us conning the taco method in like 2018? We're going to do the taco method and we're going to just apply the transfer tape over the entirety of our design because remember we're taking all of this with us when we transfer it to our screen. All right. So, let's just go ahead and do the taco method. Lay it down on here. Now, I'm just going to use my hand. You can get a burnishing tool or anything like that um to make sure you've burnished properly. All right. So, we're going to burnish this right like so. And then when you're good to go, flip it around back and going with gravity. We're going to talk about going with gravity a couple times in this next part of the tutorial. We're going to pull this back. And now we're going to burnish again. You may say, Tanner, you just burnished. Well, you really want to burnish going with gravity at all times. So, here is what we're going to do. We are going to burnish, burnish, burnish. I'm not going to peel this back just yet. I'm actually going to sit it to the side and I'm going to grab my screen and bring it back onto the craft table. So, I'm going to sit my transfers to the side. All right. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to peel the backer off of our vinyl and I am going to flip my screen around to the back and I'm going to position it on the back of the screen. So, let's do this right here. Peel it back. And then we are going to take it and position it right here onto our screen. Here's a little hack. Do not try to press on the screen and do anything like that. Go with gravity. Flip it around like so. And then come back in with your burnishing tool and go through and burnish. Again, a lot of going with gravity, making sure it goes on well, making sure you're not ruining anything. Very, very important step here. Once you feel good about that, flip it over again. And now really slowly remove your transfer tape. My tip here is to keep it close and tight. You don't want to like pull, you know, too loosely. I like to keep my transfer very tight. Just like so. And always kind of do it at an angle. Beautiful. You see this? A letter's coming up. Okay, guys. We could have a craft fill right here, but we're not going to. We're going to go back. You can keep You can go back in burnish with your finger. And then what you can also do is go in at a different angle. So go in at a different angle and see if it'll say go slow. Go slow. And make sure you're just kind of telling these letters and be like, "No, stay down. This is where you go. You're not coming with me." And if you start having this with multiple letters, just know you might want to go a little slower. You might want to flip it back over and burnish some more. Again, it is a screen, so it's like not, you know, something that's super stickable. So, I'm just going to go in really well and then try again. Oh my gosh. So much better. So, so much better. Look at that. Yay. Okay. Notice when I switch the total angle and burnish a little bit more. That's perfect. Tada. All right. Transfer tape to the side. Here is our transfer. Now we're ready to flip it around. And this is what it'll look like. Just like this after you've been able to put it on the screen. Here is what it is looking like. And it is upside down right now. But because we're using the DTF screens um and transfers, it'll end up being perfect. All right, friends. We've got the screen ready. We are almost in the home stretch of this. And then at the end of this video, I'm going to give you all the deets on CraftCon, why you need to be there, how to get a ticket, all the things. But here's what I want to tell you. When you get your DTF transfer film, you are going to have it and it's going to have a sticker. This says print side. And then that is very important to pay attention to. This print side and wrong side like look very similar. But what I want to remind you is just to leave it in the package until you're ready to use it because as soon as you pull out a sheet, this is the print side. It's hard to tell. And honestly, you couldn't tell unless you keep it in here. So do not take it out because as soon as you pull it out, that is letting you know this is the print side. It has a sticker here that says print side. So, I just want to remind you to be careful. I know some of you like to take all your supplies out. That is one that you do not do that with. Okay. For the best results, which we're all about getting the best results here, I'm going to recommend getting some painters tape. And I physically want you to tape down two or more sides of your transfer. All right? Two or more sides. I'm going to do the two edges. And honestly, I may do the top as well. Um because this is going to be very very important when it comes to the actual screen printing which we're about to do. Who's nervous? Who's nervous? I'm a little nervous. Um don't be nervous. It's going to be so much fun. But I want to make sure that you get the best results. And let's face it, we all want to have the best results. All right. So now once you are ready to go, we are going to go ahead and bring in our screen again. Now, one thing I want you to consider is if you want to do bulk of these when you were at the Cricut Design Space step, you would have just duplicated a couple of these. You could be doing the same step for this whole sheet. You could done three, you could have done six, you could have done nine. And that, my friends, is part of this hack to have really awesome transfers ready to go like never before. All right. So, I just like to share that with you in case you do like to do bulk, in case you are a seller because this is technique is going to give you amazing results and very, very high quality for your giftables, for your clients, and more. So, you're going to sit this down onto the transfer, and now the process begins. Now, screen printers, listen up. If you've never worked with this specific one that we'll link down below, it's very important to know it is thick. It is very, very thick. So, just like any screen print, you need to grab your ink. And this stuff, if you get it on your fingers, it doesn't want to come off. So, just be, you know, be careful. But it also is crafting. You want to have fun with it. Um, so you're just going to pull this back. And already got some on my hand. Just opening the lid. So, that's the fun. All right. It's hard to come off your hands. And this brings up a really great point that um to clean your screen, it does not come off with water and dish soap. You have to have mineral spirits, paint thinner, things like that. You can see we've tested over in the corner, and that's why we can't just clean it off. We need to do a thorough um gloves on clean and wash. So, just be careful. Um I just like to work with a plastic spoon. And you could see, I mean, let's just get a closeup here. Like, look at this. Like, this right here, I mean, is super thick. All right. So, this is probably thicker than what you're used to working with. I mean, it's kind of like a plastic, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's a PVC. Um, so super super interesting. So, we're just going to take some. One thing to be aware of is it doesn't require a lot. So, as thick as it is, it is not going to require a ton of ink. So, I'm just going to place it over here. I probably have too much already, but I'm just putting some out. All right. So, we've laid out just enough ink right here. And then what we're going to do is we are going to focus in on two pulls. We are going to pull once and then pull a second time. You want to have firm pressure. You want to make sure the screen does not move. All right? So, be sure if you've screen printed before, you know how fun this is. But if you've never done it before, definitely just prepare for a few test tries. It's totally fine. Super easy and you're gonna get the hang of this like never before. Are you ready to go? Let's do it. Pull one. So, this is what it looks like after pull number one. Remember to stick with it and just pull it through a second time. [Music] All right. Right. So, after your second pool, what you're going to do is I like to just kind of like wipe off any of the ink because again, this is all reusable. And, you know, in screen printing, there's also a lot of opportunity to save and reuse. It's kind of shocking in screen printing how little ink you actually use. So, it's kind of cool. Um, on the screen itself, we don't really have that much. Like, there's to save, but on here, there's always a lot to save. So, set that to the side. And now, we get to pull it up. All right. So, here it is. It's remember our transfer tape down. We're going to pull from bottom to the top. Are you guys ready? Let's do it. Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. Look at it. Oh my gosh. It's the most perfect it could ever be. Oh my gosh. We did it. All right. So, the next step is that DTF powder. So, I'm just peeling back the painters tape cuz we don't need that anymore. and we're going to bring in our DTF area. Now, if you've never worked with DTF powder, here is our little like hack. Take a plastic drawer or plastic bin or something cheap from the Dollar Tree. We have this DTF spoon that has been very faithful to us even through our move. Um, and I just kind of like to sit my transfer over to the side. And then what we're going to do with our spoon and our DTF uh transfer adhesive powder. We are we'll link this down below for you. If you've never used it, I highly recommend having some. One thing really interesting to note is that this right here we purchased years ago and we still have a third left. Like this is so crazy at how far a little goes. So I'm talking about just like not even a full spoonful. We are going to take it and don't be scared. We are just going to, you know, put it on to our design just like so. And then here's the deal. After you kind of like cover it up, we're going to shake it around. And this is why you want to have the drawer below it cuz we're just go shake this around. Make sure it covers. It's only going to stick to your ink. So have no fear. And then once it's good, you can, you know, kind of just shake it off into the into the excess drawer. Tada. So, we able to add the DTF powder. Now, again, if you're like, "Oh my gosh, I missed an area." Just go ahead and grab a little bit more and shake it back. So, this is can totally be reused, everything like that. Have no fear. Super super awesome. We like to have this, you know, here as a little catchall and then reuse. It's again, this setup is perfect for when you're making uh transfers over and over again and you just want to have things set up ready to go. I think the part and the really fun magic of this is the ability to do this at scale with a lot of designs at once. Um, so we like having these set up. So now we're gonna heat this. All right, my friends. So it's going to look kind of like powdered sugar. And this reminds me of my card making embossing days. Um, but we're going to take a heat gun. You could use a heat press. Not my favorite cuz you can't see it um transition as well, but I do like the idea of the heat press for that even heat. Um, it does take a little bit more skill with a heat gun, but what we're going to do is we're just going to turn this on. And what we're going to do is we're going to see it kind of transition. So, we're going to see it turn from the sugar into kind of like a plastic. We are seeing it gel up, which is exactly what we need. And as you can see, it becomes like so threedimensional. So awesome. All right, after so many steps, you have your transfer. Last but not least, before we get into the transfer process and application process, we need to take a pair of scissors and you just want to cut it out. Super easy. All right, so just cut, cut, cut. I'm going to leave a little bit. You can cut it as close as you want. There's no rhyme or reason here. All right, my friends. So, look at this right here. It's super cool. One thing I really want you guys to understand is that at this step, you can touch it. You can stack these on top of each other. These are really awesome um to just have on hand. And um again, you can touch it. So, it's not something that you have to, you know, do this very longerish process. Um you could bulk make these and just have them on hand for your next craft night. Um anything like that is available. Um, and these will last for quite a while without any um, wear, tear, or anything like that. You can again store them for a very long time and have them ready to go for any of your awesome projects. All right, my friends. We are going to now apply this on a t-shirt, but we're also going to do it on a hat. I am super super excited. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to make this like a little pocket tea. So, I'm g first press my shirt just to get any moisture or anything out of that top pocket. So, I'm just gonna press it. And you could do this for just a couple of seconds. And then what we're going to do next is we're going to lift this up. And we are going to We just want to make sure Sometimes it's hard to decide where um the different transfer should go. So, I like to lay it flat right here. And I just want to make sure that it's going exactly where I want it. Sometimes when I have it in the heat press, it's like, what does this actually go end up looking like? So, what I'm going to do is position this here and I'm just go be like, okay, here's where I want it. So, now I'm going to take this and we have this at 350°. And guys, we are only going to press this for 10 seconds. Now, we do have for our heat press a teflon cover protecting our heat press. And we've already positioned this um outside of the shirt, but when I have it in here, it just I'm like always freaking out like, is this where I want it to be? So, I'm going to have to lift it up again and make sure I like the positioning cuz it always freaks me out. All right. So, I decided to pull out our Maker School ruler. And yeah, I was way too far in. So, if you ever get our uh t-shirt rulers, it'll show you exactly where to kind of line out the little pockets. And this is a really good position. So, you can see this. And the last step I'm going to do is I'm just going to grab some of this heat resistant tape. And I'm just going to tape this down because I don't want to put it back in that heat press and then be like, "Oh my gosh, did it move?" But it's just hard to really eyeball things when the shirt's in the heat press because you can't see the full shirt laying down. So, we have it ready to go. We're going to take it, pop it into the heat press like so. And guys, we are only going to heat this for 10 seconds. That is all we need to do. 10 seconds of heat. If you overheat it, remember at the beginning of the video, it's going to be too hot. So, 10 seconds. Are you guys ready? Let's do it. All right, 10 seconds. Tada. All right, my friends. So, this is not something that you want to do a hot pill for. Um, you definitely want it to be like a medium heat. Ooh, I love it. Guys, I can't wait for you to make this and really feel how elegant and like for cotton. This is such a fun process. Like this is heat transfer vinyl on steroids. It's like heat transfer vinyl had a baby with screen printing and that is this technique right here. Like how amazing is this? I love it. But wait, let's put it on a hat. All right, my friends. So, put your hat inside the um pressing hat that comes with the awesome awesome hat press by Cricut and we're going to do something very similar to what we did with the shirt. So, we're going to take the Craftcon logo and we are going to kind of look at it and what here's my tip. If you have a seam running down the middle, I just don't want to press on that. It's just too risky for me. I'm not playing with the church's money today. I'm going a safe route. as you should. Okay, so I want to position it over to the side here. I I've seen a lot of hats like that, and I think it looks so cool when you can do that. So, we just had one of these already pre-made, and again, I'm going to get my heat resistant tape that is right here, and I am going to take it, and I'm just going to tape it down. So, let's look at it. And I'm just going to tape this down right here. And I'm gonna tape it down as well on the bottom. And if you want, you could do the edges, too. The edges. [Music] Beautiful. And beautiful. All right. So, now what we're going to do, let's pull that a little tighter. I actually may cut off some more of this just because I don't I feel like with any like my history of making Christmas ornaments like you just don't want to have any more um necessary. You don't want to have any more like of the transfer sheet than necessary. So, all right. After taping it down, I'm just not sold on the edge. and we're a craft channel to make the craft hacks happen and to have the fills sometimes for you. So, we're going to go straight down the middle, straight to the middle. And if it is a craft fill, it's on us. And it didn't cost you a dime. It only costed me something, my time and effort. So, I'm going to tape this down right here in the middle. And we're going for it, y'all. We are going for it, just like we're going to be going for it to make all the amazing crafts at CraftCon. Are you joining us? Grab your take it down below. And here in a second, I'm going to share with you why you need to grab your ticket today. All right. Do I have too much heat resistant tape? For sure. Do I care? No. I want to make sure this is perfect. All right. Here we go. It's in here. We're going to take it and we're going to now apply the amazing hat press. Are you guys ready? We have it on level two, about 350°. And we're gonna hit this with heat for about 10 to 12 seconds, maybe a little bit more. We will check in on it. Are you guys ready? Let's do it. [Music] We had it set on our phone for the perfect time. So, it's beeping so we can lift it up. Oh no. Oh no. Did we overheat it? Did we overheat it? We may have overheated it. Okay, it's not as bad as I'm thinking. Oh my gosh, hats are aggressive. I'll just let you guys know, hats are aggressive for crafters. All right, my friends. Here's my conclusion on the hat. And I wanted to document this because sometimes we have perfect crafts like come together. Like, this is incredible. Here's my audit on what went wrong for this project. What worked is that we did have a hat press, but I'm blaming actually the hat today. I think it would have been so much better if we had like a foam trucker hat. Um, what I noticed is the indentions were just even when we apply the firmst pressure and like really make it tight in here, um, it still has indentions and we can't get the heat to even touch. We can't even get the transfer to touch to even heat up, right? Um, so I would do this more on a trucker hat, something that's seamless, something that can get really tight in there. Um, I have not had too many bad reviews of the Cricut hat press, so I don't think it's the hat press. You might want to have a different one, things like that if you're going to sell these. Um, but nevertheless, this project is so much fun and we love absolutely how uh the shirt turned out and I'm gonna continue to work on this hat and I'll definitely report back as soon as I create a new process. But I got to tell you my secret, y'all. I am so excited to share CraftCon with you because you can grab a ticket for as low as $7. I am so excited. It is going to be a full weekend, a full craft summit that I would traditionally charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars for. You can now attend for $7. It's called CraftCon. And here's the deal. When you grab your CraftCon ticket, you're getting this file so you can start making your own merch for that weekend. And the best part is if you're already a member of Makers Going to Learn, you're getting a VIP pass. So, be sure to get started and get ready to craft alongside me and some really awesome guest teachers at CraftCon. This is going to be the craft festival that you've never even knew you needed. I am so excited for you to get started at this craft festival. It's going to be over a weekend, July 19th and 20th. There's three craft classes every day with hundreds of dollars of giveaways and so much more. If you enjoyed today's video, if you love the energy we're bringing back to crafting, guess what? Grab your ticket now and be sure to upgrade to VIP so that you can get lifetime access to all of this. You can get the ebook to go alongside CraftCon. And I am so so excited to craft with you. Be sure to give this video a thumbs up. Let me know if you're going to use this technique. I am obsessed with it. I think it is so so incredible and I know you guys are going to love having this in your back pocket and I want to see you making your CraftCon merch. So, if you're a member, grab your free ticket. If you're not already a Makers Learn member, go grab a ticket for $7. So incredible, so affordable, and accessible. And I can't wait to craft with you all weekend long on July 19th and 20th. What are you waiting for? Grab your ticket today. Get started. Make your merch so that you can be sporting it all weekend. and I can't wait to see you there at CraftCon. Be sure to give the video a thumbs up, subscribe down below, leave me a comment, and share with me your favorite part of this craft tutorial. Whether it was the craft fail, the testing, it is so much fun to do these tutorials with you, and I love getting to try new things and bring them right to you here on the Makers Learn YouTube channel. Bye, guys.