First a little adhesive vinyl project. I needed something ASAP for my daughter's dance teacher. Like literally I needed to come up with something during my daughter's 1 1/2 hour dance class. My daughter has recently become obsessed with Rainbow Loom bracelets (what, like three years after the rest of the world?!) and had made her teacher a little bracelet but really that wasn't enough, Fortunately I had picked up this little dip bowl at Walmart. I cut the teacher's name out of purple vinyl (I think it's Oracal 651 but not totally sure -- got it from a sign maker's shop) and stuck it in the middle of the bowl. It looked a little plain so I cut out some little circles and applied them on the sides. Voila, personalized jewelry dish to go with Rainbow Loom bracelet!
The success of that project made me confident enough to try some HTV. I had ordered a starter pack from Amazon and it had just been sitting in my craft room collecting dust because I don't have a heat press and quite frankly, I detest ironing. Part of my Walmart haul included two packs of flour sack towels, which were like five for $5. I decided to try personalizing them for holiday presents because I figured they were hardly an investment if I totally messed up. I designed all of the images myself in Silhouette Studio, which I am happy to report is so much more user friendly that I first assumed and I've been using more and more instead of Illustrator. I used my Silhouette to cut the images out of Siser HTV (don't forget to mirror and put the shiny side down), weeded the designs (so much easier than I expected), watched a Siser video on the time and temperature for using and iron, and applied them using the iron that my husband and I got as a wedding present (which only he had used in the prior almost nine years).
I wrapped most of them up in pint sized berry boxes that I had left from my daughter's Strawberry Shortcake birthday party. I cut patterned paper to fit each side, put in the towel and tied on a tag with bakers twine (sorry, no photos of the wrapping). I loved how they came out and so did the recipients. One told me it was the best Christmas present she got this year!
