Easy Christmas Decorations: Target Dollar Spot Sled & Adorable SVG's

I have amazing news!! Every single month I give you fun and easy to use svg’s (you can grab my 10 FREE Christmas SVG’s here or the fabulous Fall SVG’s I made last month here) but hold on to your hats because they’re about to be blown away.

My friend Michelle over at Weekend Craft has launched the cutest, the most amazing, the bestest SVG club around. It’s a membership site where every month you’ll get 8-10 rocking new SVG’s, a fun and fabulous crafting night where she’ll personally walk you through making one of them into something fantastic and you’ll get an all access pass to her exclusive facebook group where all the coolest svg cats hang out to talk shop.

Okay so the facebook group is actually just a whole bunch of us who like to share cricut tips and ask questions but it’s still a cool place to be and you should join so you get to hang out with us.

Today I’m going to be making one of her really cute Christmas SVG’s and showing you how to put it on an adorable target dollar spot sled (hello adorable sled… that I bought 3 of because I knew you’d be awesome).

If you’d like to sign up for the super awesome SVG membership site and join the darkside (we have svg’s, not cookies) you can sign up here.

And full disclosure she’s not paying me anything to talk about her site, or her svg’s or her cat (although she has two adorable cats that you’ll probably get to see if you join crafting night) BUT she is basically my blogging bff and we talk like eight million times a day so you know that she has cool stuff.

Alright, I’ll put my soap box away… let’s make this thing!

Supplies:

Cricut Maker
Fine-Point Cutting Blade
Standard Cutting Mat (that’s the green one!) or Fabric Grip Mat (that’s the one I like to use!)
Cricut SVG Files
4 Colors of Permanent Vinyl
Rose Gold Adhesive Foil
Transfer Tape
Weeding Tool
Scraping Tool
Brayer
Small Sled or Sign

Ready to take the leap but not sure which machine is right for you? Check out my Explore Air 2 and Maker comparison before pulling the trigger. I go over the pro’s and con’s of each machine and even have an easy to read check list of each machine’s features so you can decided which cutting machine is perfect for you.

Cricut Merry Everything and Happy Always Tutorial

Step 1: Upload your SVG to Cricut Design Space

Alright all you cool cats and kittens let’s get cracking! Once you’ve downloaded your SVG from Michelle’s site go ahead and upload that SVG to Cricut Design Space.

If you need a little help you can follow my full tutorial (there’s even a video walk through!) right here.

This particular SVG comes in a solid color version and a colorful version. Of course, I picked the colorful version! Which means that once everything is uploaded we’ll need to weld each color individually to make sure that everything cuts where it’s suppose to.

Other wise we’ll have to put each letter in place one at a time and no one wants that.

Simply select all the light green items and press weld, then all the dark green items, then all the red… and so on and so forth. When you’re all done you should have 5 layers all welded together.

Perfect darling!

Now select all 5 layers and make sure that the size of the over all piece is the right size for your sled. In this case we want the width of our cut file to be about 6.5 inches wide.

Once you’ve sized your project we’re all sit… hit make it!

Step 2: Cut Your Vinyl

Since we’re cutting vinyl everything is fairly straight forward, we don’t have to mirror anything, or move anything, or do anything special. Simply select permanent vinyl and hit go.

Your Cricut will tell you that you’re cutting 5 different colored mats (which makes sense since we had 5 welded colors). So I picked white vinyl for the main writing and 4 different coordinating pinks and rose golds for the bulbs and letters.

Keep in mind that since our sled is black we want to use lighter colors so they’ll show up.

Go ahead and cut all 5 colors of vinyl to be 4 x 6 and load them onto your cutting mat. Since we’re not cutting full 12 x 12 areas I went ahead and loaded 2 colors on each mat. One on the upper left hand corner like normal and one on the bottom right hand corner.

This way we can use one mat twice: simply turn it around and load it from the other side when it’s time to cut the second sheet of vinyl. Work your way through all 5 cutting mats (making sure that the white vinyl gets used for the mat with the string lights and words) and then it’s on to the next step.

Step 3: Weed your Vinyl

Ahhh weeding. My mortal enemy. How I hate thee.

Honestly it’s not that bad but it does drive me crazy! Go ahead and start by taking all 5 vinyl sheets off their cutting mats. Make sure to do this by turning the cutting mats over and carefully peeling the cutting mat away from the vinyl. This will help the vinyl from curling in on itself any more than it already has.

Now you can go ahead and weed all 5 sheets! Start by pulling off the excess vinyl (make sure not to remove any letters of light bulbs that you will need for the project!) and then go in with your weeding tool and carefully remove the middle of all the o’s, the inside of the l’s, the space inside the &.

Basically anything that’s not suppose to be there. Negative space y’all, remove the negative space.

Oh and use a Light Pad for the white vinyl. It makes it so. much. easier.

Step 4: Transfer Tape!

Ready for the magic to happen? Start by cutting a 4 by 6 section of transfer tape and dog ear the corner to make it easier to peel up. Then line it up over your white vinyl and press that baby down.

I like to use a scraping tool so that you can really smooth the transfer tape into place.

Then carefully peel up the transfer tape with the white vinyl on it and discard the carrier sheet. Now you should have your white vinyl letters on your transfer tape… perfect!

Carefully line up your vinyl on your sled and smooth the transfer tape out with your fingers. Then smooth it out with your scraping tool… then peel up your transfer tape but this time the vinyl letters should stay on the sled. Every once in a while I’ll have a letter that tries to come up with the transfer tape, just scrape it back down and keep going.

Beautiful!

Now we’re going to rinse and repeat… do the exact same steps for the other four colors. You can use the same piece of transfer tape for the entire project (I find they’re sufficiently sticky for more than a few transfers).

Simply make sure that your little light bulbs are lined up on the light string before you scrape them down! As long as the light bulbs are lined up the letters should be too… which is AWESOME!

Just look at how awesome that is!

Of course, there are tips and tricks to layering vinyl but I find going slow to be easy enough. If you need a little help you can put parchment paper over 3/4 of your sled, line up your transfer tape, scrape down the portion of the sled that’s visible, remove the parchment paper and scrape down the rest of the design.

Since the vinyl/transfer tape won’t stick to the parchment paper it gives you more opportunity to lift the vinyl and readjust.

Once all 5 layers of vinyl are in place you’re done!

I absolutely love how this turned out!! I’m not 100% sure where I’m going to put this bad boy so for now I thought it would make it’s home in my mercury glass tree forest.

AKA the kitchen island.

Didn’t it turn out so cute!

If you want to make your own (or check out the other 9 SVG’s for the month head over to Michelle’s SVG club and become a member. You won’t regret it!