We're going to Disney! That's right. We have a summer vacation booked for Orlando, Florida. It's going to be awesome!

My Dad got a call from my Aunt and Uncle in Scotland. They told him that they were going to Florida on vacation in the summer. My parents figured it would be cool to book a condo and meet them there.

My parents live on the West coast, as well as my brother, his wife, and daughter. (Although they live a few states apart.) When they heard the news, they figured it would be cool to meet them there.

I live on the East coast with my wife and 3 kids. My sister lives down the street. When my parents mentioned it to me, I thought it would be cool to meet them there. When I mentioned it to my sister, she thought it would be cool to meet us there.

So it seems, between Scotland, and 3 states in the US, we're all going to converge in Florida for one huge family vacation.

Unite the Clans!!!

This calls for a commemorative t-shirt, since a family reunion of this magnitude has not been seen in years. That, and I can't pass up an opportunity to create something cool.

I fired up Comic Life and started to drop in some text. I like Comic Life because, although it's main focus is comic books, there's a lot of fun things you can do with text. You can bend text, add drop shadows, gradient fills, etc. You can then export them as .pngs.



I exported the font-work as a .png and took it into Pixelmator.



I then added the Scottish flag as a background image, removing the white. The print is going to go on a white t-shirt so there's no sense in putting white-on-white.



I then added a nice rampant lion image, cleaned it up, and added a drop shadow.



I then headed over to CustomInk.com and put together an order for 17 shirts. With a bulk discount, they only came out to about $15 each. That's not bad. I've spent more on T's from the likes of TeeFury and Threadless. And this was designed by me!



About two weeks later, a box arrived on my Dad’s doorstep. CustomInk’s shipping time was a record breaker. From the time they sent me my shipping notice, to the time it landed on my Dad’s doorstep was only 13 hours. Amazing!



I won’t have a shirt in-hand for a few more weeks, so I had my Dad take a few snaps and send them over so I could check them out. I was dying to see how they came out.

They look pretty good, despite the fact that the print doesn’t cover as much area as the proof above suggested. Maybe it’s just an optical illusion between a t-shirt flat on the floor and one worn by a dude.



I had my Dad take a selfie and send it over. I guess it is an optical illusion, because it does fill the whole front of the shirt. I’m happy with that.



Comparing the large size above, the kid’s small, and the 4XL, it’s clear that they scaled the stencil so that it worked on all 3 sizes. I just wish it was a little larger on the 4XL.



I contacted CustomInk and they told me that in order to blown up the print for the 4XL, they’d have to create an additional stencil for another $70 bucks! I didn’t think it was worth all that. I just hope that with the wrap-around on the shirt, most of the front is filled by the print.

They’re going to make for a cool family picture with us all wearing the same shirt. Not to mention, we're going to have a bunch of kids with us, so it’ll be easier to keep track of the group when we're at the parks; kind of like what schools and summer camps do.

Fast forward a few weeks....



Yup, the shirts looked great, and everyone loved them!