Acrylic ornaments with vinyl and paint

I had purchased the ornaments long before I decided to do the craft show. The original reason I bought these as part of wedding gifts is in another post. When the show arrived, these made a perfect addition for selling items. Lots of people from the Facebook groups I am part of make them, and they look like a great project. I ended up playing around with so many ideas because I had no idea what to put on them. But once I got it figured out, I was on a roll making them. 

I was super happy with how they turned out. I had no idea what to price them at, either, so I looked at what they were selling for on Etsy and places like that. And went with similar prices. It's kind of hard to judge on pricing. There are calculators to help with it, but sometimes the formula doesn’t work. I sold a few, so I did something right!

I did a few different options for the ornaments; some had just images, and others had words. There were some that said first Christmas as Mr. & Mrs., baby's first Christmas, oh holy night, merry and bright, and some had different types of snowflakes. I didn’t do the painting on the back; my husband wanted to do that. He likes to paint, and he really wanted to help out. 

Materials:

How to make broken down into steps:

Sizing and cutting the vinyl:

1. Open design space and either load images or add images you want from DS. 
2. To size the image, I create a circle that is the same size as the ornament. This step isn’t necessary; it helps with sizing and placement.
3. Once all the images are the size you want, you can change the colour of the images if needed.
4. Add vinyl to your mat(s) now that sizing and colour change is done (if needed).*
5. Go to "make" and click "mat for any material."
6. Load the mat into the machine when prompted.
7. Set the material to what you want. I usually use the washi tape setting.
8. Once all that is set up, hit cut and let the machine cut away.
9. Repeated as needed.

Removing and Weeding the Vinyl

1. Unload the mat when prompted.
2. To remove the vinyl from the mat, flip the mat over and pull the mat off the vinyl to help keep it from curling.
3. Take your weeding tool and weed out the vinyl you don’t need. I keep scissors close just in case I need to cut off a piece of vinyl that is getting in my way.

Adding the vinyl & paint:

1. Take your scissors and cut a piece of transfer tape to the size of the image.
2. Pull the transfer tape off the backing and place it on top of your image.
3. Take your scraper and run over the front and back to help adhere it and remove some of the bubbles.
4. Remove the backing from the image so the image is on the transfer tape.
5. Place the ornament on the self-healing mat and use the tape to help hold it down.
6. Use your alcohol wipes to clean the ornament, making sure it is nice and dry. 
7. Place your image where you would like it to go using the grid on the mat to help with placement.
8. Peel the packing off the ornament and use the alcohol wipe to clean the back, and let it dry.
9. Flip the ornament over and paint the back with your chosen colour (s). You can do the whole back side or just a line, whatever your heart desires!
10. Take the heat gun to help dry the paint dry faster. You don't need to, but I like to use it sometimes.
11. Add the twine, string or ribbon.

Notes:

*If you are using scraps, you can do more than one colour or piece on the mat. I do them in the corners or at the top and bottom. You can also move the images around on the preview screen to position them where you placed the vinyl. For example, if you placed the piece of vinyl right in the middle of the mat, move the image to the middle of the preview screen mat.

I hope this helped you make your own acrylic ornaments or will help you in the future.

If you have any questions or comments pop them in the comment box below I would love to hear from you!