DIY Christmas Gift Tea Towel and a Festive Card

(This post is part of my Frosty Festivities 2015 Blog Event – see a list of all the posts HERE)

Hello! Yesterday I posted a giveaway from the SVG Files Shop, you can enter to win 10 SVG files HERE {NOW CLOSED}! Today I’m back to show you a couple of things I’ve made with files from the store – a tea towel and a Christmas card.

First up is the DIY Christmas Gift Tea Towel:

I used THIS Christmas Holidays file to cut some red iron-on-vinyl using my Cricut Explore, and ironed it on to a plain white tea towel. There are a couple of things I want to point out about the process…

When I uploaded the SVG into Cricut Design Space there was a plain white background around the image. This would be useful if I wanted to flatten and print the image, but I wanted to cut it, so I had to click the eye icon next to the white background on the layers panel – I’ve added a red arrow to the image below so you can see which one:

Once the white background was gone there were still lots of different layers on the SVG, but I wanted it to all cut as one. So I clicked on the image, then clicked the ‘attach’ option from the top menu of the layers panel (again I’ve added a red arrow so you can see where to click):

This leaves the image looking like this, and you are ready to click ‘go’ – and make sure you click the ‘mirror image for iron-on’ option if you are cutting from iron-on vinyl:

I cut my image at just under 11.5″ wide. I’m not sure I’d want to cut this image any smaller than this, as some of the pieces were TINY, even when cutting it so large. I had to weed it very carefully and some of the little bits wouldn’t come out at all (like the details on the snowflakes):

I ironed it on to the tea towel (putting a piece of greaseproof paper on top of course):

Here’s what it looked like after ironing. The ornaments look like they are floating in space because the dots between them and the twirls above were too small to come out at all:

So I just cut a couple of slivers of iron-on vinyl from the left over scraps, and used these to ‘hang’ the ornaments:

I think it looks super stylish and was worth the effort! If you are gifting it to someone make sure you tell them it can be machine washed but on a low heat setting (I was at 40 degrees) and to only iron on the reverse!

Next I used THIS Happy Holiday SVG file to make a Christmas Card:

Again the pieces were tiny, but I had cut the image quite small – 5.25″ tall. I was quite impressed that the Explore managed to cut it without ripping it to shreds, though I did manage to break a couple of bits off the wreath while I was taking it off the mat:

I stuck them on the card by turning the pieces upside down on a piece of scrap paper, and running my Herma repositionable tape runner over the top, before adhering them to the card:

The card really didn’t need much else, apart from matting it onto some pretty patterned paper and adding a few tiny gems on top:

A very delicate card for someone special!

Be Inspired:

Use iron-on-vinyl, fabric paint, or fabric ink-pads and stamps to decorate a tea towel

Make a monotone project eg. just red and white

Put a wreath around the edge of a project with a sentiment in the center

Do you think all these fiddly details make the projects look extra special?

Remember that commenting on this post, and any post that goes live during November 2015, will count as another entry into the Grand Giveaway {NOW CLOSED}, but only if you’ve registered your interest in winning that prize right HERE!

I’ll be back again tomorrow with another Frosty Festivities project!

Jennifer x