DIY: Handwritten Recipes on Tea Towels

I promised to give you glimpses into my personal life, as well as my business one and today I am fulfilling that! Saturday I stood up for my best friend Nicolette as she married the man of her dreams in Columbus, Ohio. Thankfully for me, her wedding was 3 weeks before my "wedding season" is scheduled to start, so I was able to do all of the Maid of Honor duties with little to no freaking out. OK, well, some freaking out. :) 

I saw a fantastic idea on Pinterest on how to transfer handwritten recipes to tea towels for the kitchen. I knew instantly that I wanted this to be my wedding gift to her, but I needed help from her family! When I mailed out the shower invitations, I asked each guest to come with a handwritten, family-favorite recipe. I asked them not to tell her about it, and that I would be using them for a special gift to the bride. This post documents my process on how the towels were made. 

The first step was relatively simple, getting the recipes from family members and scanning them into my computer. I took the scans into my editing software and bumped up the highlights and contrast making the script easier to read. I sharpened each scan and then saved as a JPEG. I wanted the bride to have the digital files saved forever and I plan to email these to her as well. 

Each image was mirrored so that the text would read correctly (left to right) once transferred. This step is absolutely essential. I used Photoshop for this, flipping it horizontally. The image was now ready to be printed. I used t-shirt transfer paper, and changed my printer's setting to transfer paper for best printing quality. 

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The recipe printed "backwards" essentially (see above picture) which is correct! I was now ready to start the process!

Prepare each towel by ironing out any creases and wrinkles. Be sure that the towel is cooled when you start the transfer process. The directions that come with the transfer paper proved very helpful and I followed them more than the tutorial I was taking inspiration from. It tells you to iron on the transfer on a hard surface (not metal or glass, so I used wood) and not to use an ironing board. 

Once the paper was placed in the best position, I started to iron the image down. The trick is to keep the iron moving, with the temperature set to high for cottons. Make sure you do NOT use steam. I ironed in a circular pattern for about a minute and a half to two minutes. 

I ended up giving them to the bride unwrapped during our getting ready time. I wanted to present the towels in front of Nikki's mom and grandma who knew about it and gave me recipes. I made her cry! OOPS! Luckily, she hadn't started her makeup just yet :)