My crafting game is still going strong with spending more time at home! With International Women’s Day coming up on March 8, I thought it would be fun to create some customized shirts using my Cricut Joy to celebrate.
One of my favourite things about my Cricut Joy is it’s size. It’s perfect for small spaces, is lightweight and conveniently portable. It’s so quick and easy to whip out that I tend to craft more frequently with having it around.
Don’t get me wrong – I love my maker, and this machine could never completely replace it, but sometimes it can take some time to get out and set up. I love how easy it is to just grab the Joy and whip out some vinyl stickers, a card or a simple iron-on design in 5-15 minutes depending on the complexity of the craft.
I ended up making two different #IDW2021 inspired shirts (honestly, there were just so many fun designs and I couldn’t decide!) with my Cricut Joy in about 15-20 minutes. They have a couple of different layers to them, which is why it took a little longer, but it was still so quick and easy to make them.
For the first shirt, I used a basic pink cotton sweatshirt and created a typographic design using Cricut Design Space with one of my favourite quotes; “A girl should be two things: who and what she wants” (Coco Chanel).
For my second shirt, I wanted to use a different base material and went with a white cotton-poly blend t-shirt that I had laying around. For this shirt, I decided to use a pre-made cut file that I found in Cricut Design Space that said “let equality bloom” and was surrounded with some flora details – I just thought this design was so pretty and perfect for International Women’s Day.
Anyways, let’s get crafting!
DIY International Women’s Day shirts:
- Cricut Joy
- Smart iron-on material or regular iron-on plus Cricut Joy mat (I used both methods for these shirts)
- Basic cotton t-shirt/sweatshirt
- EasyPress or an iron
- Lint roller
Step 1 – creating your designs:
For the most part, this step is similar to when making projects with other Cricut machines. The main difference is to ensure you have the right machine selected from the drop down menu once you open Design Space.
Once you’ve selected your machine, it’s time to get creative! Cricut has loads of fonts, images and read-made projects available for free. There’s also tons more available through Cricut Access. If you’re graphic design savvy you can also upload your own designs in any of the following formats: .jpg, .gif, .png, and .bmp.
For this project, as mentioned above, I created one design myself using fonts in Design Space and one of my favourite quotes, and then for the other design I searched for a pre-made cut file that I liked by using the keywords “International Women’s Day”.
Step 2 – loading the machine, cutting and weeding
Once you’re ready to make your project, click on “make”. You’ll see a pop-up menu asking you to select a load option for your materials for the project. In this case, we’re using Smart Materials so select the “without a mat” option and then get your materials ready. Make sure you have turned “mirror image” on.
Because I was using a mixture of both Smart iron-on and Everyday iron-on, when selecting you materials Design Space will give you an option to load your materials “multiple ways”. I chose this option and then set my materials for each mat/material colour. For the white material, I chose Everyday iron-on on a matt, and then I chose Smart Materials for the rest.
Remember, when working with iron-on the shiny side always goes down on your cutting mat or for Smart Materials, you simply load it shiny side down, and line it up with the base of the machine. Once the material is loaded, click cut and Cricut Joy will do the rest. Once it’s done cutting, click the “unload” button from your device’s screen.
Once your design cut and weeded, it’s time to iron it onto your blank shirts!
Step 3 – iron-on transfer:
Before you iron-on your design, make sure that you use a lint roller to get off any dust, loose threads or pet hair. I always also like to iron my material to remove as many wrinkles and lines as possible to help ensure a better transfer. I find that it also helps if the material is a little warm to start as well.
Using the Cricut Heat Guide, set your EasyPress to the right temperature and place your design onto your shirts. My shirts were a cotton poly blend, so I used 310°F and heat for 30 seconds with light pressure, then flip the shirt over so the front is facing down and repeat this process for another 30 seconds on the back to ensure seamless transfer. Wait until the shirt/transfer has cooled down a bit, then peel the transfer backing off slowly in a diagonal direction.
Since both of these designs have multiple layers to them, I had to iron on each design one layer at a time. For my quote sweatshirt, I started with the gold lettering. Once that was done, I then layered the black font on top. For the t-shirt, it was a little more complicated since it had so many layers. I started with the red, then pink, white and finally gold.
I’m really excited about how these turned out! I’ve already worn both of them and have gotten some compliments on them. It was so easy and quick to make these with the Cricut Joy, I can’t wait to make some more.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. While I may have received compensation and/or product mentioned in this post, the opinions and text are all mine. This post also contains affiliate links.
