Since it is already August, I thought I had better start thinking about not only Christmas, but also the Christmas craft sale my mother-in-law has every year. I plan on making items to sell with both the Cricut and my Embroidery Sewing machine…. and all Cat/Cat Lover themed.
Again I found and downloaded these FREE patterns from www.lovesvg.com!
I loved how well the mugs below turned out. I have one of them running through my dishwasher right now to see if they are actually dishwasher safe like the permanent vinyl package stated.
I picked up these mugs at the dollar store. They were $1.25 each. I figured I used maybe 50 cents worth of permanent vinyl to make them, bringing me to a grand total of around $1.75 to make each one.
It took me about 25 – 40 minutes to download the designs, add the designs to my Cricut app, cut the vinyl and apply it to the mugs. Not too bad for that amount of time. I haven’t decided what I am going to price them at, but I think with what it cost me to make I have a pretty good profit margin.
My grand plan is to make items with both machines that will coordinate with each other to hopefully make multiple purchases of items that match!
I have so many ideas floating around in my head for both the craft sale and for Christmas itself to make and sell/gift. This weekend I plan to get one of my notebooks out and start to plan what I want to make, how many, who I want to make what for, pricing for items I want to sell and things like that. It will be nice to not only gift these items I am making, but to also make a few bucks selling them!
If anyone has any advice, suggestions or anything else regarding selling homemade items, please fill me in. It has been a long time since I made anything to sell!
(I am also thinking about trying to design and cut leather to make jewelry, again as gifts and possible to sell!
Chris is already laughing at me because of how much I am enjoying “playing” and asking how many rooms I am going to “label” lol! So far I have only made signs for 2 rooms, so I am not sure what is so laughable. He is probably thinking of my machine embroidery as well because I don’t think there is a room in the house that doesn’t have some sort of machine embroidery in it… labeled or not lol!
Here is the sign I made for the laundry room! I used the Cricut for the lettering and “leaves,” and then decided to embellish it a little.
I was lucky enough to have a day where I could and felt like playing again. This time I decided to make a little sign on a dollar store chalk board for my kitchen. I made it and hung it in the open space on the wall behind my taps.
I have to admit… I had a complete “Duh” moment when I did this one. I wasn’t even thinking about how dark the background/chalk board was before I cut the vinyl. I was out of black, so I used a dark brown which barely showed up on the chalk board! I ended up having to recut that section of the pattern in white in order for it to be noticed. Live and learn I suppose lol!
Sunday afternoon I designated as “play” time. I wanted to try making a sign for the front door using the Cricut and a wooden canvas I picked up from the dollar store.
Here is the canvas….
I gave it a sort of “washed” paint finish using brown, white and turquoise.
While the canvas was drying I started on the lettering for the sign.
I found this SVG cut file/pattern (and literally thousands more) for free at http://www.lovesvg.com.
I downloaded the pattern and started to load and cut the wording.
Once they were all cut, I placed them on the transfer tape (which is awesome because it has a built in 1 inch grid for those of us who can’t do anything in a straight line).
I measured how big the pattern would be when placed and used those measurements to centre the words/lettering on the canvas.
I used the scraper that came with the Cricut to make sure the vinyl was fully adhered to the canvas and peeled off the transfer tape.
This is how it looked finished.
I stapled some twine to the back and tied it at the top in a bow before hanging it on our front door!
I started to type Part #1, but then I realized I made mention of the gift basket in 2 previous posts…. the one where I bragged (yes, I do know that is rude but I wanted to share really bad lol) in my “I Got a Cricut” post, and in my last post about the Wedding Card.
This time it is some stemless wine glasses, a glass carafe and a tin bucket that I used to stack the basket on!
It was really easy to find free Mr. & Mrs. images online to do what I wanted to do. These ones I found in the Cricut app. They are just words but I did them in vinyl and added them to the glasses, carafe and tin.
Again the whole thing was really user friendly… put your images into Design Space, set it to the cut function, load the mat… prepared with vinyl on it and push the buttons
I chose black vinyl for the tin and the carafe and a silver vinyl for the glasses. I suppose I should have taken pictures as I was doing it but once again I got so involved in what I was doing that I forgot! I will try to remember for my next project!
Here are the embellished dollar store items I made for the basket!
I forgot to take a separate picture of the wine glasses but I think you can sort of see them through the basket wrap…
I cannot believe how many things there are that I can make/embellish with the Cricut. One of the things that excites me most is what you can do with leather!!! I haven’t been able to try it yet because I don’t have the right mats or blade so far, but I will definitely be trying some of the leather bracelets I saw for gifts for this Christmas!!! For now….
So…. I got a bit of “play time” over the weekend to fiddle around and familiarize myself with my new Cricut. I do have to say I am very impressed. While the card isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, the parts where it did the cutting are awesome. The card just wasn’t what I wanted because of my own issues, not the machine itself.
I decided I also wanted to try the “write” function on it to do the wording for the front of the card but I definitely need to work on that…. size, colour, font choice, that sort of thing.
All and all thought I ended up with a cute card that will go well with the shower gift I made with my Cricut, my Embroidery Machine and a few things from the dollar store!
Here is the card….
Not terrible for a first attempt but I most certainly have a lot to learn yet lol!
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