Crafts are for Babies! (pt. 1)

A few months ago, Drewbles and I were talking about the Care Bear Stare (never let it be said that we don't talk about the important things).  At that moment, it dawned on me that I had the PERFECT Care Bear tummy.  What better way, I thought, to harness the potential of my basketball-like figure than with a shirt that would make me look like a Care Bear?  

Well.  As it turns out, no one else has had this same idea because I couldn't find anything like that.  Ideally, this is what I wanted:

But I couldn't find anything close to that, so I put on my thinking cap again.  I had this pack of iron-on paper already so if I could find a pink maternity shirt then I could make my own!  You would think pink maternity shirts would be everywhere, but I had trouble finding the right one.  Eventually I happened upon one at Hobby Lobby (of COURSE) that was even on super sale (of COURSE--I mean, it was Hobby Lobby [I love you, Hobby Lobby!]).

So I made my awesome design in Photoshop, which took all of five minutes (all I did was find an image of the belly I wanted and then used the pen tool to recreate the shape at the size I wanted).  Then I got out my iron-on paper-in-waiting and printed it off.  "So close to finishing and it was so easy!" I crowed. 

Here's a funny thing: apparently unused sheets of iron-on paper don't really last for, oh, ten years.  Who would have thought?  I tried twice--there was no way that transfer was separating from the backing paper.  NO WAY. 

I'm pleased to say the story has a happy ending that goes like this: we went to Walmart and bought new paper.  I printed it off again, peeled off the backing in 30 seconds and finished my shirt at last!  On our vacation last week I broke it out for the first time:

(Why yes, I DID take these pictures in the hotel bathroom.  I hope you notice their fine 90s decor.)

Wearing the design on such an, ahem, rounded surface makes it kind of pucker around the edges, but I don't care because it's still so funny to me.  And before you ask, I picked Love-a-lot bear's design simply because that's the Care Bear I have.  

But yes, one person did ask if I'm having twins.  I can only hope the t-shirt led to that question and not my size...hmmmmm.