Five Ways To Use Your Cricut For Back To School

Less than two weeks until our summer break is over and I am putting the finishing details on all of my daughter’s back to school items. At her school, all of her items have to be clearly marked as hers, so we always come up with a fun design to put on all of her school things. This year we went with this fun and easy unicorn. The best part? Just a few clicks and you can resize this for any size school object.

custom school supplies

For this project you will need:

• backpack
• lunch bag
• notebooks
• pencil pouch
• water bottle
• black glitter iron on
• gold glitter vinyl
• black glitter vinyl
• transfer tape
• a Cricut
• Cricut EasyPress or Iron
• Cricut Brightpad

To make life really easy, you can find my cut files here.  Follow the instructions below for resizing or creating from scratch.

I used the same file for each of these projects, I just resized the image to fit what I was working on. I used iron on for the backpack and the lunch bag and vinyl for the other three items.

 

Open up and sign into Cricut Design Space. Design Space® software for iOS, Android™, Windows®, and Mac® . Your screen will look similar to the above. There will be a top banner, followed by a banner of your latest projects. You can see some of my most recent projects on the screen above. Below that will be the Make it Now projects. Hit the green plus sign next your projects to get started.

 

Using Cricut Images

Your new project will open up for you as a blank grid. Click on the images tab on the left-hand side of the screen to start this project. First search for unicorns in the top right corner search bar. Scroll down until you see the image of a unicorn horn with flowers. This is an access image so if you subscribe, it will be free to use!

 

Then repeat this step for the eyelashes. There isn’t an image that is just eyelashes, but I will show you how to make one from a preexisting image.

How to Use the Contour Tool On Cricut Design Space

Find the image above and insert it into your canvas. Now this image isn’t exactly what we want, we just want the eyelashes, but we can easily make it what we want with the contour tool.

First select the image and then hit the ungroup button on the right-hand side of the screen. This will separate the elements of the face.

Click on the lips and hit the red X. This will delete the lips from your canvas. You can’t do this with the eyelashes, because the nose and the eyelashes are one item. This is where the contour tool comes in.

Select the eyelashes and nose and then hit the contour button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

In the hide contour panel, deselect any elements that you want to delete. This will remove those cuts completely. Return to your screen with just the eyelashes remaining.

 

Resizing

Once you have inserted the image into your project you can resize it and move it around. Resize the image by clicking and dragging on the double arrow symbol that appears when you have the image selected. If you click and drag around your entire design, you will be able to resize it as one item instead of multiple items.  There is a size box at the top of the screen that lists how big the image is, you can adjust the width and height here if you don’t want to manually toggle the blue arrow key.

 

 

One of my favorite features of Cricut Design Space is that when you change the colors of elements in the layers pallet, the program will assume that you want to cut those items out of a different kind of material. To change the colors of something, go over to the far right side and find the element you want to change. For text boxes, they are usually represented by the first letter in the line of text. For images, it will show a small version of the image. Click on the colored black dot and a color menu will pop up and you can change it to another color.

When your project looks the way you want it, it the Make It button in the top right corner of the screen.

 

For the backpack and lunch bag, you will need to hit the mirror image button on the right-hand side. For the water bottle, pencil case and notebook you will NOT mirror your canvas.

Place iron on shiny side down on your mat, or vinyl pretty side up on the mat. Select whichever material you are cutting, vinyl or iron on and set the machine to cut.

 

 

 

After your image has been cut, weed the extra off, leaving just your design. When you are weeding glitter, it is incredibly helpful to have a light source. I use the Cricut BrightPad.

After you have weeded your images, you are ready to apply them. With fabric, you will use an iron or the EasyPress. With the plastic items, we will use transfer tape.

Place your image on the pocket of your backpack and set the EasyPress to 305 degrees. Wait until it is heated up and then press down on the image for 30 seconds. Peel off the carrier sheet, repeat the process for the lunch bag. If you lunch bag is lined with plastic, make sure to put parchment paper inside your lunch bag before ironing to keep the plastic from melting together.

For your other designs, cover them with a piece of transfer tape. Use a credit card or other smooth surface to rub the tape until the design pulls up. Place it where you want it on your object and smooth it down. Slowly peel the tape back, leaving your design.

 

For the backpack, I used a smaller pocket design, about 4 inches tall.

For the lunch bag, I used a large design that covered most of the bag, about 6 inches tall. 

For the notebook, I also used a larger design, about 5 inches tall. 

For the pencil pouch I used a design 4 inches tall. 

For the water bottle, I used the smallest design of all at 2.5 inches tall. 

My daughter was absolutely thrilled with how these projects turned out and I was thrilled with how easy they were.

How do you customize your kids school supplies?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.