The t-shirt is covered with Reel Cool Papou Father Day Shirt Fishing Vintage 4th Of July TShirt . an adhesive Then the foil comes over that adhesive. Once it is laid down, the excess is removed. Where there was adhesive on the shirt, the foil will stay.Where the adhesive was not, the foil will be gone. Smooth, right?Usually, foil printed t-shirts don’t last that long through washes.An alternative is metallic inks. It won’t be as shiny, but they’ll hold up much longer. Also, they’re cheaper to do. So, if you want to pull off gold colors there are multiple ways to do it.A lot of print on demand printers will use this method. Dye sublimation is your design printed out onto a giant piece of paper. This will be big enough to cover the entire t-shirt. For this, we use a special type of paper called sublimation paper. First, the design is printed out on that giant sheet of sublimation paper. After that, is turned over, so that the ink touches the t-shirt.