Get inspired and put your cutting machine to good use this holiday season with over 15 ideas of personalized gifts to make with your Cricut!
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Put your Cricut into max mode this fall and get ready for the holiday season with personalized gifts for everyone on your list! I’m sharing a list of ideas of items I’ve made with my Cricut Maker, but since most are vinyl or cardstock in nature, they can also easily be done on my Cricut Explore Air 2.
First before we get into the actual projects, let’s talk vinyl and which material is best for most surfaces:
- Heat Transfer Vinyl – Also known as HTV or iron on vinyl is best used for fabric surfaces, like making t-shirts, hats, socks or other wearable pieces. BUT you can also use heat transfer vinyl on painted wood signs or painted canvas, as adhesive vinyl tends to peel off these surfaces more easily! The adhesive element needs to be heated with an iron or heat press in order to be secured to it’s surface.
- Tip: DON’T forget to set your cut to “mirror” before cutting as it needs to be weeded on the reverse side of where it sticks.
- I typically use Siser brand vinyl, which I buy in rolls at Michaels when it’s only sale for $9.99 OR I get sheets of it from Expressions Vinyl. I buy sheets so that I have an assortment of colors for all the little layered vinyl designs I might create. (I believe that first link gets you a $5 off coupon for signing up into their rewards program!)
- Adhesive vinyl – This comes in both permanent and temporary and has an adhesive surface to stick to whatever you’re applying it to.
- You need transfer tape and a scraper to adhere this to surface. I like the scraper tool in the Cricut basic tools pack and just recently added the large scraper to my tool collection!
- Permanent Outdoor Vinyl – Adhesive vinyl also comes in different strengths and base materials, with Oracal 651 Permanent outdoor vinyl being one that I use often for my outdoor pieces, such as my daughter’s boogie boards and the car decals I’ve made.
Now onto the personalized gift inspiration!
- Boogie Boards – Summer may be months away, but you can gift toys during the holiday time that can be used all year! This summer my husband gifted our daughters and nieces matching boards that I personalized using outdoor vinyl. See how I did it here!
- Car Decals – I used Oracal permanent vinyl to create car decals for my parents brewery and my friend’s macaron business for their cars! Should I make one for myself and my blog?
- Ice Pop Holders – I made them as party favors for the girls’ rainbow birthday party two years ago and mine still put them into play every time they take out an ice pop in summer.
- Water bottles – Whether it’s bottles for sports purposes, like these Igloo brand 1 quart coolers my girls used for soccer and softball season, or smaller ones for school, you can personalize them with waterproof outdoor vinyl!
- Storage Tub – This isn’t necessarily a gift but I guess it could be! These are the storage tubs I use to store the girls’ memorabilia, printed school items that are important, school pictures, sports pictures, certificates and other childhood paperwork.
- Silhouette T-shirts – I made these for my parents years ago featuring the heads of their 5 grand children for the silhouettes.
- Ornaments – Seems obvious for the holiday season but you can use your Cricut to make any ornament theme you want or personalize them for the teachers with the school mascot!
- Home Decor Signs – especially ones featuring the family name!
- T-shirts – Feature their name, favorite travel destination or even their artwork on a wearable gift! I have lots of svg cut files for t-shirt designs on my blog, including these matching Eat, Sleep, Disney ones I made for the whole family this past summer or these class of graduation year t-shirts I often make for gifts!
- Paint your own t-shirts – In addition to creating fun t-shirts using heat transfer vinyl, you can also create stencils using freezer paper that kids can paint themselves! See how in this post featuring this 100 days of school t-shirt craft Brielle did in the 1st grade!
- Personalized welcome mat – I’ve used the same freezer paper stencil method shown above to make a few doormats for my home. Tip: apply the paint using an up and down motion, don’t go left to right, to lessen chances of bleeding.
- Drink Tumblers – Use that permanent vinyl to decorate wine glasses, tumblers and other drink containers with your phrase or icon or choice!
- Onesies – If you know someone expecting that has a dog, make them one of my dog lover onesies as a gift using my free svg cut files and your Cricut!
- Personalized Pumpkin– If you’re headed to a Thanksgiving celebration, house warming or wedding in the fall, make the host/bride a personalized fake pumpkin!
- Drink Koozies – I love these slim can drink cozies and have been making cute designs and gifts with them for the past year, including the after school fuel drink koozies I’ve made for teacher gifts! This is a neoprene material so I used heat transfer vinyl on a low setting on it!
- Stickers – Did you know you can make a full sticker sheet or individual waterproof ones to stick on water bottles with the Cricut print and cut feature? Learn how in my post here!
- Personalized Wedding Cards – these are made with pieces of cardstock cut on my cricut but it’s a fun personalized gift you can make as you can easily change any colors of cardstock for the hair, skin, tux and even flowers in the bouquet. This all inclusive design is FREE so you can create any of the three pairing sets seen here.
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