DIY Disney's Love Bug T-shirt Belated Valentine & Silhouette Tutorial

I grew up with Disney, watching all the live-action movies on our VCR and laughing along with the very old fashioned humor. I have very fond memories of that. And this T-shirt is a reference to just that. My sister and I must have spent hours in front of that TV giggling at Herbie the Love Bug. I don't know why it was such great fun; it was probably my sister that made it so funny. We had a knack for that.  Well, that and Buddy Hackett. Who wouldn't love that guy? Whatever the case, that lovable VW comes back with this cute T-shirt.

I made this using my Silhouette machine, some adhesive/stencil vinyl, and some fabric paint. It was simple to do and I love an original design! I altered the car shape a little for this shirt and I wanted to share with you how I did that, so for those of you following along at home, here's a tutorial for altering a shape using the Shilhouette software.

First, I used Abadi MT Condensed Extra Bold for the font - it was close to the original movie font and already installed on my machine. I then used the echo park car shape for Herbie. I enlarged it to 7.075 inches. To enlarge it while preventing distortion, hold the shift key and then drag your shape to enlarge it.

Now I had to do a little editing to get it just right. First, I altered the lines on the hood to make them bigger so they would stand out on the t-shirt. To do this I first selected the shape and ungrouped the layer. This allows you to select just parts of a design and alter them. It looks like this on your screen:

I then selected the lines on the hood and used the same process to ungroup them. They should now be two separate lines. Move them apart just a little bit - one or two clicks of the arrow keys (on your keyboard) to the right or left. Once I had them separated, I selected both of them by clicking on one, holding the shift key down, and selecting the other. You should now have both of them in the bounding box. I then used the offset tool to enlarge them to .07 inches. Like this:

Once that was completed, I selected the original line and deleted it, so just the fat line was left. Like this:

I then used the circle tool to draw a circle 1.32" big. To get a perfect circle, hold down the shift key while you drag out the circle shape. I positioned it on top of the lines the I just altered, and then selected both lines and the circle; I went to the Modify menu and selected "subtract all." This is important if you want to use this as a stencil. This way you are not cutting lines through your circle.

Once I had that done, I added the number 53 to the circle in the same font and sized it to where it looked good. Lastly, I used a heart from another design I had (elephants) and placed it in the window. That's it! I sent it to my Silhouette and cut it out.

If you try this let me know! I'd love to know how it works for you. Until next time, may all your days be filled with fairy dust!