Birthday designs inspired by party themes

I avoid purchasing and using designs of characters I am not licensed to sell, so when friends ask me to make a birthday shirt to match a theme, I use it as an opportunity to be creative. :)  Today I'm going to share with you two older projects that I haven't blogged about yet.
Cayden celebrated his fourth birthday in November Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle style, so I created this!

I started with 8CP's Chatty applique 4. I added triple bean stitch tackdown lines for the bands of blue knit, letting them hang out on the right side of satin stitching. I tied them in a knot and trimmed the edges. So proud of myself, *I* digitized the eyes. They aren't perfect, but got the job done! Found a free ttf that matches the TMNT logo and my MIL digitized the name for me. I borrowed my husband's action figure (yes husband, not son) to pick my green fabric. :)

The reason I have held off on blogging about this particular shirt is because a new design set from Lynnie Pinnie based on this project is in the works! The 4x4 sizes of the designs have been sent to us testers. I'll post my pictures of those tomorrow. It's really neat to see a brainstorming idea of mine come to life in the hands of a real digitizer!

A couple weeks before making Cayden's shirt, I also made a birthday shirt for Sean. His party theme was Super Mario Bros. and this is what I came up with:

I used the 6 from GG Designs' Chubby Wubby Numbers. Before starting though, I pieced together a pair of overalls by putting two strips of blue on green fabric, and then adding that to a larger piece of blue fabric. Once I had that done, I tacked it down as one big piece to trim out.

I merged in a couple embroidered buttons (plucked from LP's Cupcake design), and used Embird alphabet 30 to add his name (closest I could find to match the logo).

 Both of these were fun projects that stretched me to think outside the box and try something new!