Elf Inspired Shirts with the New Cricut Explore Air 2

You will need:

• A shirt
• A Cricut Explore (I have the new Cricut Explore Air 2 and I LOVE it)
• Black Heat Transfer
• Green Heat Transfer
• Yellow Heat Transfer
• Red Heat Transfer
• an iron

To make these shirts, head over to the Explore site and select the great big blue, Create a New Project button. Save the image below to your computer and then hit the upload images button and upload the feet you found. Select whether the image is a simple image, moderately complex image or complex image. This image, especially since you are just tracing the feet would be considered a simple image. Simple images are the easiest to trace so look for an image with high contrast colors. Insert them into design space and move them around until you have them where you like them.

Type the words into a text box on design space. I’m a Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins is in a font called Extreme and I Just Like To Smile, Smiling’s My Favorite is in Open Sans for the green words and Zoo Day for SMILE.

If you don’t want everything on your mat to be one color, make your images different colors and your Cricut will know that you plan on cutting them out of different colors and place them on different mats when you hit cut. I changed the color on on the word smile and the elf legs so my machine would know I was going to cut them in a different color from the rest of the design. When you have you design looking the way you want it. Hit Cut.

For this project you will need red, green, black and yellow heat transfer. Cut the entire Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins shirt out of the red, as well as the word smile. Cut the remaining words out of the green. You will cut the feet for the smile shirt twice, once in black and once in yellow.

Weed off the excess heat transfer by pulling a corner of the heat transfer. Take special care around the dots of I’s and other small items.

Once your heat transfer is weeded, place it down on the shirt like you want it. You will iron the yellow feet down first for the smile shirt. Set your iron to the cotton setting on your iron (or about 305 degrees) Preheat the area of the shirt you want to place your vinyl for about 3 seconds then place the heat transfer on the blanket with the right side facing up. Using medium pressure, iron the entire image for about 30 seconds, directly onto the carrier sheet, without any steam. After you finish, I like to flip my  shirt inside out and iron for another 10 seconds from the back. Peel the carrier sheet off. If any parts of the image pull up when removing the carrier sheet, stop peeling and iron for a few more seconds in that spot.

After the words and yellow feet are ironed down on your Smile shirt. cut the legs off of the black feet and place the shoes over top of the yellow shoes. Place a piece of parchment paper over top of the entire design and iron it again.

The Cotton Headed Ninny Muggins shirt doesn’t require any layering, so it can all be ironed on at ones. Make sure as you put the separate pieces on that every piece of vinyl is actually touching the shirt and not the plastic of another piece of it will be ironed to the plastic and not the shirt.

After the shirts are ironed they are ready to wear immediately! When you wash them, flip them inside out and they will last a long time.

My girls love their cute new Elf shirts and they were so easy to make for them! This was one of the first projects I used my new Cricut Explore Air 2 for and I loved the ease of the machine. The precision cuts of the machine are absolutely fantastic. Everything I have made, even teeny tiny items have all weeded fantastic. The machine is so quite I have actually used it with my two year old sleeping in the same room without waking her up. That is HUGE for me since nap time is craft time. I am thrilled by all of the different material that this machine can be used to cut, from vellum to leather, the Cricut can cut more than 100+ materials. Cricut just came out with faux leather. Can’t wait to see what people are going to do with that! The Cricut Explore Air 2 is up to two times faster than other machines,

The best part of this machine? It is super user friendly. It is easy to figure it out and it is incredibly easy to teach someone how to use. This is the machine I would recommend to anyone hands down. Cricut also has an iPad app and embedded bluetooth in the machine, so you can create on the go, no need to be sitting at your computer. This machine is my absolute favorite and the color is fabulous. If you want to see everything that is included in the box, you can watch my unboxing of the Cricut Explore Air 2 here. 

Who would you make these fun shirts for?

Cricut

Black Iron On

Red Iron On

Green Heat Transfer

Yellow Iron On

Cricut Tools