DIY Power Ranger Tee

Convention season is right around the corner! *hops around in a circle* 

Which means it's time to start focusing on cosplay.  My friends have been interested in the idea of casual cosplay lately..either because we're getting older and more reserved, or simply more lazy.

So when Friend E came up to visit, we went to K-Mart and picked up six of these brightly colored sleeveless muscle shirts in the men's section.

Okay, we'll pause here and ask - how many of you grew up on Power Rangers? My brother and I collected the cards and everything. But I got mad when they changed the original American cast out and stopped watching. That was the end of that. I remember having a crush on the green ranger. Oh, Tommy, you bad boy, you!

Anyway, I was shocked to learn later on in life that in Japan the yellow ranger is a dude, and that if you watch the action scenes of the American series, you can notice that the yellow ranger doesn't wear a skirt like the pink ranger does. And also has a package. Yeahh. Way to not re-film the Japanese series fighting scenes.

Back to the project..K-Mart (obviously) did not have a pink tee in their men's active wear section, so we bought a white one and some dye.

11 o'clock at night, we forced Sak down to the garage to dye the shirt pink.

He did a good job, though he wasn't very happy. (Bedtime is a usual 10 around here.)

Friend E made the iconic diamond pattern out of paper, while I sat back with my camera and critiqued. I'm so helpful.

Then, the secret trick! We transferred the pattern to dark iron-on transfer paper.  Dark iron-on's are opaque and white, so we could just iron the paper straight on, no muss no fuss!

We decided to iron on the green ranger as a trial, since he's kinda extra anyway. If we messed up, at least we'd still have the original five.  (Or we could just go back to K-Mart and pick up some more five dollar shirts..)

I ironed on the transfers until the guys got nervous and took the iron away from me.

Snazzy, eh?

For the sides, we ironed the transfer straight over the arm hole for the flush diamond look.  Unfortunately, in the process we didn't cover the first diamond well enough, and melted some of the design!

Good thing we started with Tommy.

Here's the arm hole:

Make sure to keep a piece of parchment paper under the arm hole too. Otherwise the iron-on would get transferred to the ironing board!

Friend E trimmed the excess iron-on from the arm hole with an X-acto knife...

And we tried to fix the melted spot with a bit of leftover transfer paper..

Practice runs are your friend!

Anyway, the shirt came out pretty good!

This is Friend E.  He said I could only post his picture if single women read my blog.  I'm sure there's one. Maybe.

By this time it was in the AMs, and Sak and I passed out.  Friend E took the rest of the shirts home with him to finish before Fanime, so hopefully they'll be done! I get to be the yellow ranger. Not the one with the package.

Who's your favorite ranger?