I wanted to make Rhydian Roberts a t-shirt, because I have been a fan of his for many years, I met him in 2015 and I wanted to surprise him at his next Meet & Greet. I designed and made this unique Welsh Dragon t-shirt for Rhydian - it took a lot of patience and countless hours to complete the t-shirt.
I instructed my personal assistants how to create it step by step. I always use Photoshop and Illustrator on my Mac computer to create my initial designs. Once they are printed out on card - they are cut to make stencils and used to create the outlines on a plain t-shirt. Then the transferred design gets coloured in with fabric pens, to help to visualise the different sections and apply a base of various background colours.
To make the colours permanent, the design had to be ironed over. Then each individual rhinestone needed to be glued on using fabric glue, the t-shirt was left to dry thoroughly before the fabric paint and glitter could be applied. Each individual coloured fabric paint and glitter was then applied separately. The time-consuming aspect was waiting for the paint and glitter to dry before the excess glitter could be shaken off - before another coloured paint/glitter could be applied. The finished t-shirt looks professional and effective, I'm thrilled with the final result and the fact Rhydian has influenced me to design this for him. To accompany the t-shirt, I have also designed him a "RR" cap that matches the dragon's cap on the t-shirt.
Here is a photo of Rhydian wearing his t-shirt.
