Have you ever heard of a Mermicorn?

When my 8-year-old daughter asks to work on a craft project it usually consists of slime making, t-shirt drawing/coloring, or little pieces to decorate her bedroom. Her usual go-to graphics are unicorns, mermaids, hearts, stars, rainbows, and flowers of any kind.

A Mermicorn is half unicorn and half mermaid. The unicorn on the top half and a mermaid tail on the bottom half to complete the look.

With a little help from Adobe Illustrator, I mashed together two of my daughter’s favorite things. Mermicorns everywhere! Originally she had only asked for unicorn graphics that she could create with but I am an overachiever every once in a green moon. Green moon because I’m pretty sure that, that doesn’t exist and neither does my overachieving-ness. (Haha sorry kid.)

Creating fancy socks using sublimation.

I found 100% polyester socks at the store. You can literally find these anywhere. Not sure if all 100% polyester socks are created equally as good under the pressure of a heat press but with these 98¢ pack of socks they held up their end of the bargain.

Project Fun

To start this project I helped my daughter by sketching out mermicorns and stars in a 3″x7″ shaped pattern using a Silhouette Cameo 3. Using the gray adapter for the Silhouette Pen Holder because it fits the Artesprix Sublimation Black (Fine Tip Marker) perfectly. (See the quick timelapse video below.)

After everything was sketched my daughter was able to color the design in with the abundance of colorful sublimation markers available from Artesprix.

Next, I stepped back into help heat press her fun colorings. With the heat press warmed to a hot 400º Farenheight I pressed the socks for 30-40 seconds. My daughter was coloring the next page so that the socks would have a completed look and not be one-sided. (Haha.)

Once she finished coloring I repeated the heat press steps for the other side of the socks. The Artesprix Heat Tape and protective paper really help make these sublimation projects run smoothly. Sandwiching the pieces of protective paper along with the project piece not only helps the project turn out great but it can save your heat press from unwanted colorings on future projects.

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Ta-dah! Mermicorn Socks for Tiny Feet!

Socks stretch… but even with the little bit of stretch hugging my daughter’s feet they came out very colorful and she was very pleased with them.

Well, until the next time my kid requests to craft! Keep creating stuff.

Just kidding I make craft all the time.

–  Courtney