How I Made Personalized D&D Shirts Without Owning a Sublimation Printer

I have a D&D group full of genuinely good humans.

When Josh and I got married, the members of our group went far beyond simply showing up as wedding guests. They helped us set up, transition everything throughout the day, and generally made themselves useful during one of those events where there are approximately 847 things happening at once.

So afterward, I wanted to make everyone a thank-you gift.

Obviously, I couldn't just make everyone the same shirt.

That would be far too easy.

Instead, I decided to design custom Dungeons & Dragons shirts for every member of the party, personalized around who they are both at the table and in real life.

Step 1: Turning My Friends Into D&D Shirt Designs

I started with ChatGPT and gave it information about each person: their personality, their role in our group, little inside jokes and other details that made them them.

Then I assigned everyone a real-life D&D character alignment.

Somehow this seemed like an entirely reasonable way to categorize my friends. 😂

From there, I developed an individual shirt concept for each person rather than simply changing the name on one generic design.

That was probably my favorite part of the project. Each shirt was recognizably part of the same collection, but the wording and details were specific to the person receiving it.

It turned a relatively inexpensive handmade gift into something that actually said:

I know you. I appreciate you. And yes, I have apparently assigned you a character alignment.

Step 2: Finding Graphics on Creative Fabrica

Once I knew what I wanted each design to say, I needed the actual design elements.

I used graphics from Creative Fabrica to help build the shirts.

That's one reason Creative Fabrica has become such a useful resource for my craft projects: instead of needing to create every decorative element from scratch, I can find fonts and graphics that fit what I'm making and then combine them into something that's actually mine.

Affiliate disclosure: The Creative Fabrica link below is an affiliate link. If you make a qualifying purchase through it, I may earn a commission at no additional cost to you.

Browse Creative Fabrica through my affiliate link

I especially like having a giant library to search when I've already got a very specific idea bouncing around in my head but don't necessarily have the artistic ability—or desire—to hand-draw every single element.

Step 3: Setting Everything Up in Cricut Design Space

Once each design was finished, I brought it into Cricut Design Space and set it up as a Print Then Cut project.

Normally, Print Then Cut means your home printer prints the image along with Cricut's sensor markings. You put the printed sheet onto your cutting mat, and your Cricut reads those marks to figure out exactly where it needs to cut.

There was just one small problem with my plan:

I don't own a sublimation printer.

And I specifically wanted these shirts to be sublimated rather than made with regular printable transfer material.

Fortunately, I had a workaround.

Step 4: Using the Library's Sublimation Printer

I've discovered that our local library Makerspace is basically a secret weapon for my craft projects.

Instead of purchasing a sublimation printer for one project, I used the sublimation printer available at the Makerspace.

The important part was preserving the Cricut Print Then Cut sensor marks.

Rather than sending the project directly to a printer at home, I used Cricut's print workflow to print the project to PDF, including those black registration marks.

I saved the PDFs and took them with me to the library. 

At the Makerspace, I opened each PDF and printed it using their sublimation printer.

So now I had a professionally sublimation-printed version of my design with Cricut's sensor marks still intact.

Step 5: Bringing Everything Back to My Cricut

This is the part I wasn't completely sure would work until I tried it.

I brought the printed sublimation sheets home, put them onto my Cricut mat, and returned to the Print Then Cut project.

Because the black Cricut sensor marks had been preserved in my PDF, my Cricut Maker could read the registration marks on the library-printed sheets and cut around my designs.

Success!

It essentially allowed me to separate the two halves of Print Then Cut:

Print: Library Makerspace sublimation printer
Cut: My Cricut Maker at home

That meant I got the benefit of sublimation without having to buy another printer.

And considering the number of craft supplies and machines that can slowly colonize a house, I will happily use somebody else's equipment when I can. 😂

Step 6: Sublimating the Shirts

For the shirts themselves, I bought blank polyester shirts from Amazon.

Polyester was important because I was using sublimation. Unlike vinyl sitting on top of a shirt, sublimation ink becomes part of the polyester fibers when it's activated with heat.

Once everything was printed and cut, I used my heat press to transfer each personalized design onto its shirt.

And suddenly the ridiculous things I'd been designing on my computer were actual wearable gifts.

The Finished Gift

This project combined a frankly absurd number of tools:

ChatGPT helped me brainstorm and personalize the concepts.

Creative Fabrica gave me design elements I could incorporate into the artwork.

Cricut Design Space let me prepare everything as Print Then Cut projects.

The library Makerspace gave me access to a sublimation printer I didn't own.

My Cricut Maker cut the finished sublimation prints.

And finally, my heat press transferred everything onto the polyester shirts.

But what I really loved about this project wasn't the technology.

It was that every shirt was different because every person was different.

These weren't generic D&D shirts I could have ordered online. They were thank-you gifts designed around the people who had shown up for us when we needed them.

And I think that's one of my favorite things about making stuff.

Sometimes you're not saving money.

Sometimes you're not creating something you could sell.

Sometimes you're making something because there isn't a version on Amazon that says exactly what you want to say.

And in this case, what I wanted to say was:

Thank you for being part of our party—both at the table and outside of it.

Here are the designs: