Boom Squad 4th Of July Tee Shirt

I think my very favorite holiday has to be the Fourth of July. I like grilling out and backyard parties. I love sitting around waiting for it to get dark with friends. I like hanging out at the lake. But what I love MOST about the Fourth of July are fireworks.

Gosh, guys, I am SUCH a firebug. Back when I lived in Oklahoma I was in an unincorporated area of the country. And that meant that it was all systems go for fireworks. Like, everybody we knew would hit up one of the firework tents on the way out to our house for Independence Day and fill up their trunks with the good stuff, the boom stuff. And then they’d come out and add their fireworks to the pile of MY fireworks. And let me tell you, I had a PILE.  There would be literally a thousand plus dollars of fireworks in the garage placed on shelves and folding tables I’d put just for people to set their good stuff on and in between beers and chicken legs, everybody would go inside the garage to ooh and aah at our massive haul while it was still light out and we were all anxiously waiting for it to get dark.

A house over and down from my place, there was a family who did the same thing as we did. But they had EVEN MORE people at their Fourth of July parties and they had EVEN MORE fireworks. And it became this unspoken sort of camaraderie/friendly rivalry to have the best show. Their people and our people would take turns lighting our big stuff after it went dark and we’d clap and yell and generally hoot and holler and cheer and it was So. Much. Fun.

Now I say “our people” but in all honesty it was me. Except for one year when we had 2 active duty military home from Afghanistan and they popped the fireworks and just stood right by them as they went off. That year I sat on a tailgate and watched the show and hooted and hollered with everybody. And it was great!

Because when you’re the designated lighter of the firecrackers, it’s a lot of work. First of all, it’s flippin’ hot. Secondly, you’ve got to carry the firecrackers to the street (which are kept a safe distance away from the booms show) and then you have to get it properly set up. You light it, run away and as you’re running you turn back and start to walk backwards so you don’t miss most of the show. But you normally miss the first shot or two. And then you go and kick the cake in the ditch and head back up to the house to get another one and just keep it a-rollin’.

In spite of all of the work, I LOVE THE FOURTH OF JULY and I have no problems being the designated fireworks technician if that means we boom it out big time. When my nephews were little, they were a little afraid of the fireworks which, in all honesty, is pretty smart. It’s always a good thing to have a healthy respect for dangerous things. But we’d buy tons of chickens and tanks and smoke bombs and invite the kids down the street, a family of 6 foster children, to come and pop the “safe and sane” fireworks with the boys and they always had a blast.

Fireworks are also legal in Oklahoma on New Year’s Day. And so one year my sister and I bought a TON of red (his favorite color) fireworks just for my nephew’s birthday and without a group of other kids to bolster their confidence, they were a weensy bit frightened. It was cold outside and we set the kids up on the back of my mom’s Yukon with the tailgate up and lots of blankets and some hot chocolate. And then my sister and I got to lighting and booming. The boys, still a bit nervous despite their cushy place to watch the show wanted to know what to do in the event of an emergency.

My sister, a mother, and knower of things to say to quell the fears of her small children said: “If I run, you run.” And so, when I was working on a U.S.A. design for Fourth of July shirts for this year I remembered that and thought, that would be an adorable tee shirt.

And since everybody has some serious squad goals these days (or at least they did, perhaps that trendy ship has sailed) I decided to dub our little band of firebugs the “boom squad”. And as our motto? “If I run, you run.” :)

For this project you will need:

• Free Boom Squad SVG Cut File
• Cricut Maker
• Standard Grip Cutting Mat
• Cricut Easypress (or iron)
• Heat Transfer Vinyl in White(Amazon ⋆Cricut ⋆ Expressions Vinyl)
• Tee Shirt

Now I still haven’t figured out how to make an SVG file import into Cricut Design Space without having everything go crazy on the cutting mat after imported straight into the program.

Right after importing your Free Boom Squad SVG Cut File, if you hit the “Make It” button you’re going to have this kind of a mess going on. Unless you like a good HTV puzzle, this simply will not do. But it’s cool because it is an easy enough of a fix…

Import your SVG file into Design Space and size it for your tee shirt. I typically like to make my designs take up as much of a 12″ x 12″ piece of vinyl as possible because I like BIG designs. And why not use the whole piece of vinyl, right?

After bringing the file into your design workspace select the image and then right click. Select “Attach” so that the file cuts in the order it is in the image file.

There we go. Much better, right?

Be sure to mirror that business and get to cutting.

Cut your vinyl and then weed it appropriately. Using your Cricut Easypress (or iron) adhere the vinyl to your choice of a shirt. I’ve got 3 different options here for tees. I rocked out the white design on top of a heathered red tee…

The lovely blue version…

And then a red, white and blue version using on a white tee. Now, if you want to do 2 colors of HTV, like our red and blue vinyl on a white tee you’ll need to tell Cricut Design Space to cut the stars out of another color, or they will all cut from the same. It’s not difficult, though. Select the SVG image in Design Space and right click. Select “UnGroup”.

Select just the stars…

…and change the color. Now your HTV will cut out of 2 different colors on 2 different mats. Cool, right?

This tee is TRULY one of my favorite Fourth of July shirts EVER. And if you’re looking to achieve some Independence Day #squadgoals, I think you just might love it as much as me! Happy and safe popping, firebugs!