Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll baby gear

October 17, 2010 8:21 PM

I need to have the perfect personalized rock 'n' roll onesie made for my friend's baby! It may involve Etsy, but it may involve something else. You can help me on this score.

A dear friend and his wife are expecting their first child soon. I met my friend when he was in a moderately successful indie band in the '90s; he has since gone on to a different career, but his life as a musician is still very important to him.

I have come up with the perfect idea for a baby onesie (or t-shirt, or bib, or something of the sort) based on a pun on his band name and one of their album titles. However, I don't just want to print the modified band name/album title on a baby shirt and be done with it; I want to replicate the rather complex design and typefaces of the original album cover as close-to-exactly as possible. I have almost zero design skills myself. I assume (possibly incorrectly) that I couldn't do this via CafePress, and so would need a custom order, perhaps through someone on Etsy? Suggestions?

(Anonymous on the chance that my friend or his wife or one of their family members read Metafilter)

posted by anonymous to grab bag (5 answers total)

What about creating an Etsy alchemy request?

Assuming you have the album art in digital form - and especially if the art is very simple or if any text is in a bog-standard typeface (i.e. Helvetica, Old English, something that comes standard on most computers), it shouldn't be too hard.

A good question to be armed with is whether you'd like a silk screened design that incorporates aspects of the original art (i.e. the sort of thing that would be commissioned for a promotional t-shirt), or whether you want something a bit more literal.
posted by Sara C. at 8:33 PM on October 17, 2010

You might be able to do this yourself with freezer-paper stenciling if you have the inclination, a little patience and a steady hand with an exacto blade.

A couple tutorials here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/04/make_tshirt_stencils_from.html and here: http://panjokids.blogspot.com/2008/06/freezer-paper-stencils.html

(OK, so the examples pictured aren't so rock 'n' roll. But you can do anything you want. Colleagues and I did crazy policy-speak lines from actual social science research papers. Which, you know, were so very rock 'n' roll.)

If you want a little info before you go clicking around: The method calls for cutting the design out on freezer paper (either using a high-contrast copy of the original design as guide, slid under the freezer paper you're cutting, or by printing the design straight onto the papery side of the freezer paper using an inkjet--not laser--printer.). Then you iron your cut stencil onto the shirt, bib, or onesie, iron it down to keep it from sliding around, brush textile paint into the stencil space, then peel off the paper.

And the crowd goes wild.

PS: Freezer paper is not waxed paper.
PPS: Slide something inside the shirt or onesie so the paint doesn't leak through before it dries.
posted by celilo at 8:45 PM on October 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

You could use something like this to do it yourself. You could scan the album cover, modify the scan as desired, print it out on any old inkjet printer, then iron it on.

I've easily and successfully created 15 t-shirts with a fictional school name for my daughter's drama class play. And she has designed her own, with textas (Sharpies?), that have stuck hard and fast through many washes.

Marvellous invention!
posted by malibustacey9999 at 8:58 PM on October 17, 2010

memail me.
posted by pinky at 9:19 PM on October 17, 2010

This seller might be able to work with you.
posted by questionsandanchors at 2:19 PM on October 18, 2010