9 Cute Animal Drawings T-shirt Iron-On Designs

I made a bunch of animal drawings and turned them into SVG files to make iron-on designs with my Cricut.

My daughter adores her older brother and wants to do everything he does. As a result, while every other girl Mom is inundated with princesses, my daughter refuses to wear a dress.

She now only wants to wear shirts with what she calls a “cartoon” on it. So now I have a ton of blank shirts that she won’t wear.

I decided to turn this around the other day and made a bunch of “cartoons” to iron on her blank shirts.

(I might have used pinterest as inspiration for the drawings but drew them myself so no copyright laws violated!)

Sharpie Illustrations as an Iron On

This one is super easy but in case you want my illustrations set, you can just skip this part.

There are ways to use all sorts of vectorization software but for this project, I pay for a service called Vector Magic.

I use Vector Magic because it is fully automated and works better than Adobe or the free stuff.

In any case, I just drew the cartoons in pencil. I messed up on the unicorn so had to start over. but it didn’t matter! I then took a medium point sharpie (you can use any thick marker) and traced the pencil drawing. I then took a picture on my phone, then uploaded it to Vector Magic and then I had an SVG cut file to use with my Cricut!

Pretty cute stuff!

Recommended Materials for Draws on T-shirts

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Blank T-shirts – Anything works, as I mentioned earlier, I just took a bunch I already had. Here’s some from Amazon

Iron-on Vinyl – I just bought an assorted set of vinyl from Amazon that had the best rating.

Iron or Heat press – These designs are small so an iron works just fine.

Cutting Machine – I use a Cricut. Check out my recommendations for Cricut machines and accessories for beginners for more info.

Templates – I’ve included all 9 cute animal drawings this kit available in my resource library.

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Tips for Iron On Drawings

There’s really not much to it, iron-ons don’t get easier than this:

Step 1: Cut the vinyl and weed the excess off. My only tip here is to peel the corner of the iron-on sheet to figure out which side is the vinyl and which side is the transfer sheet. They always say smooth side and I’m like both sides are smooth!!

Also, don’t forget to mirror the image in Design Space. It doesn’t really matter for these designs but doesn’t hurt.

Step 2: Pre-iron the shirt. It helps because it gets the wrinkles out and helps the vinyl stick better.

Step 3: Place a folded up towel underneath the shirt. This helps apply counter pressure to the iron.