We travel to Cancun every year for spring break to have some fun in the sun with our family and friends. This year, our group was quite large, with 19 people ranging in age from tweens to adults. When traveling with a group, it’s fun to have something to tie everyone together. With Nora’s help, we came up with some incredible labels for insulated tumblers for the adults, but the kids also wanted something cool too! My daughter asked if the kids could have matching shirts. Brilliant idea!
We brainstormed ideas, and they liked the idea of shirts similar to the ones worn in the movie “She’s Out of My League” that say “Branson Bound.”
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- The first thing I did was look at the templates in Cricut Design Space™ and clicked on the tee shirt template. It helped with the sizing of the design. Of course, I’m pretty detail oriented, so I consulted Pinterest for size guides for tee shirt designs. Check out our Creative Crafts Pinterest Board for some pins with tips for sizing and placement of heat transfer vinyl.
- I scrolled through different fonts and chose some similar to the one in the movie shirts, added a slight curve to the words “Cancun Bound!” and tilted them slightly. After coming up with a few variations of the design that said “Cancun Bound!” on Cricut Design Space™ and showed them to the kids, and they unanimously agreed on one.
- Then my daughter, with her very creative eye, asked if we could incorporate a palm tree in the design…Voila! A palm tree exclamation mark was added. I searched for a free clip art palm tree graphic with a transparent background and downloaded it to my computer. A couple of clicks later, and I added it to Cricut Design Space™.
- The last design step was adding a small circle underneath the palm tree to resemble the bottom of an exclamation mark.
- The next decision was choosing the shirt and heat transfer vinyl (HTV) colors. After much debate we settled on black shirts and Tiffany blue HTV.
- After double-checking the size of the design, I “attached” the words, palm tree, and circle so they would print together and maintain the proper spacing. Remember that the Cricut is programmed to save space on cutting, so anything not “attached” will be cut to minimize wasted vinyl, paper, etc.
- I did have to trim the width of the HTV, since it was 15″ wide, and the maximum size to fit into the Cricut machine is 12″ wide.
- The two biggest things to remember when cutting HTV is to “mirror” the image before cutting and place the HTV on the cutting mat with the plastic/shiny side down. Check out the “Everyday Iron-On: Cutting and Application Instructions” tips from Cricut.com.
- Once the HTV was cut, I weeded out the excess vinyl, leaving only the design. This was SOOOOOO much easier than the small and detailed design for the stainless steel tumblers, and I was thankful for it!
- Since I was a little pressed for time (pun intended), I took the shirts and HTV to our local vinyl store where they professionally heat-pressed them for me for $1/shirt. That was money well-spent in terms of time saved ironing them myself. Hopefully soon, we can purchase a *Cricut Easy Press of our own!
The finished product looked fantastic! The kids were very excited, and they even wore them to school on the last day before Spring Break! While we weren’t all on the same flight, I snagged this photo at the airport of some of the kids while we waited to be Cancun Bound!
If you want to take your creativity to the next level, consider getting a Cricut! This machine has been incredible! Don’t forget to visit Cricut’s Blog for more design inspiration.
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