Cricut - Oopsey Daisy

Cricut + Vinyl = Happy Me

April 1, 2010 17 Comments

I am learning to love vinyl!! So many great color choices. I made this name plaque for my sister's newly-decorated living room. Don't you just love the colors she chose?! The cream and brown are perfect. I even matched the font to another piece she had in her living room. (I probably spend way too much time selecting fonts to know off-hand that this font is Papyrus!) Anyway, I love how it turned out.

By the way, this was my last project before my Cricut mat was officially retired. I am sad to say that it is dead and gone. I guess when your Cricut mat looks like mine, it's time to break down and get a new one. Now I have a brand spankin' new one that looks like this!

**However, I did purchase a quilt basting spray that added a lot of much-needed stickiness to the mat, and that probably doubled it's lifespan. **

Stay tuned for tomorrow... I have TWO downloads in store for you!

Filed Under: Cricut, vinyl

Vinyl is Back!

March 24, 2010 2 Comments

LAST CHANCE: Enter my Happy Hundred Give-away by midnight tonight! Winner will be announced tomorrow.

It's been a while since I've done a vinyl project, so I decided to make this scripture tile for my Dad's birthday tomorrow. (Hope you're not reading this, Dad!) My Dad is a stake president, and this is his favorite scripture. I thought it might be a nice addition to his office.

However... I had a couple of problems:

1. I do not have any cricut tools, and I'm beginning to wish I did. Peeling off the tiny little pieces of vinyl is a pain! Those dots on the i... oh man! I need one of those scraping tools, and bad. I kept tearing and having to re-cut pieces. Do any of you with the scraping tool thingy find this to be essential?

2. I cut my vinyl on too low of a pressure setting, or maybe the needle is just getting dull. Either way, it was NOT peeling easily. All in all, this innocent-looking tile took me about 3 hours to finish!! Thank goodness my son took a long nap. What a sweetheart. He probably realized his Mom needed extra craft time!!

Not too shabby, right? I tried to keep it simple and clean cut for my Dad. Nothing too fancy. And now for convincing the hubs that I need some cricut tools!!

Filed Under: Cricut, vinyl

Cutting Fabric With Your Cricut!

March 9, 2010 49 Comments

That your Cricut can cut fabric?!

Am I the last one to figure this out?! I had heard rumors that this was true, but decided to try it out for myself to make my little guy this applique shirt:

One of the things I like least about sewing is the cutting, so this little trick is going to save me for sure. Here is what I did:

1. I used a 100% cotton fabric. I am not sure if any other fabrics would work. I pre-washed my fabric with NO fabric softener.

2. I adhered Heat-N-Bond to my fabric. I have heard that Pellon does NOT work, so avoid that. I just followed the directions on the package.

3. I peeled the paper backing off of the fabric and adhered it right on my Cricut mat. I smoothed it on the mat so it was good and smooth. I cleaned my mat right before this step, just to be sure it would have the ultimate clean cut.

4. On my cricut, I set the speed on the lowest possible setting and the pressure on the highest possible setting to be sure it would go slow enough and deep enough to cut through. I have also heard that using a brand new blade ensures the best cut or having a blade set aside just for cutting fabric would be a good idea. But I used my old, very-used blade and had no problems at all.

5. CUT. I was still in denial that this would work, so you can imagine my amazement when I peeled away the fabric and found out that it really worked!

Because I was doing an applique, I ironed my fabric right on my shirt. I found that my large fabric pieces "stuck" the best at this point. My tiny "Lucky Charms" letters needed an extra layer of Heat-n-Bond to stick. It seemed to lose some stickiness after I peeled them off the mat.

So after sewing around my edges, here is the final effect!! My little guy is a very active model--a moving target!! I thought this was the most manly shamrock, but just in case I paired it up with his camo pants. I don't want anyone thinking he is wearing a flower!! Strangers STILL ask me if he is a girl. Must be those pretty blue eyes.

This is the best view I could get of the back of the shirt. By the way, appliquing tiny letters is so difficult!!! My mother and I both had the hardest time. So I gave up on the shirt saying "Lucky Charm" and just went with "Lucky." I am definitely going simple with my next applique. No more tiny letters!!!

Linking up to

Filed Under: applique, craft, Cricut, sewing, St. Patrick's Day Tagged With: cutting fabric with cricut