Crafts: Custom-Made Dr. Seuss Apparel

For Josiah's party, my mom mentioned that Converse sells a Dr. Seuss line of shoes. We checked them out, but were not impressed at all. The kids shoes were adorable, but the adult ones left a little to the imagination. While they seemed "inspired" by Dr. Seuss, they had very few characters or details explicitly from Seuss books. We decided that I could make my own for much cheaper than the $66 Converse required. I browsed a few stores and then found some cheap black and white shoes at Goodwill for only $3.99 a piece. I used my paints and just decorated them myself. I made the black pair a "Horton Hears a Who" theme for my mom, and painted the white pair in a "Cat in the Hat" theme for myself.

 

I also decided to order a bunch of Dr. Seuss iron-on transfers through eBay to make my own shirts after not finding any for the price I wanted online. Each transfer cost about $5 with shipping and handling, and each shirt cost about $5.

HOWEVER...

I was so disappointed with the ones I ordered. Half of them arrived within a day or two, but didn't transfer right and ruined my shirts. The other half came just a day or two before the party after many emails to the sender to hurry up and still didn't work. Despite following precise instructions, my transfers either didn't transfer completely, peeled off, or cracked. In the end, I bought my own transfer paper (and all new t-shirts) and printed out my own designs from my ink-jet printer. They all turned out great! And, lesson learned, if you want something done right, do it yourself!!! These are my shirts (Josiah's Thing 1 was the only ordered transfer that worked well, which is good because it was the most important one to me!):