Mr. & Mrs. Acrylic Ornaments

I wanted to make a cute ornament for family members who were getting married this year (2021). It meant so much to me to make these for our family they had to plan a wedding during a pandemic. I wanted to give them something special to have for their Christmas tree. Plus I am one of those people who likes to give a gift made from me when I can. 

You can customize these by either adding first names, last names, the full date or adding beads on the twine. Just need to find out what everyone likes and have some fun with it. 

The package of acrylic ornaments I ordered had something like 25 ornaments in it. It was cheaper to order a package than to.order individuals or a pack of two. I did have a bunch of plastic clear bulbs I could have used but they didn't have the right feel or look for what I wanted.

Materials: 

• Acrylic ornaments - Amazon 
• Oracal 651 vinyl White - or color preference 
• Cricut
• Cricut  Design Space (DS) - on computer, tablet or phone
• Weeding tool
• Scraper - you can use an old points card if needed
• Green standard mat
• Scissors 
• Transfer tape
• Cleaner and paper towel 
• Twine or ribbon

How to make - I am going to break this down into sections

Creating Image/SVG: 

You can either create your own SVG or purchase one. I tried to find one but I didn’t really care for anything that I saw so I made one. 

1. Open Cricut Design Space click on textbox and type out you you want the bulb to say “First Christmas as Mr. & Mrs. 2021”. Play around with what font you want to use. 
2. To get it to fit on the bulb properly you can type each word in a textbox individually (I suggest this for some just starting out using Design Space) or I ungroup the words so they are individuals to move them around.* 
3. Create a circle that is the same size as the ornament from the shapes tab and place the words where you want them, then group and attach. Move the circle out of the way you don’t want to group it as well. 

If you are making more than one ornament just highlight your image and hit duplicate and you will get a second one or just right click and do copy and paste.

 Cutting the vinyl:

1. Add vinyl to your mat and run your scraper over the vinyl to help it stick it down.
2. Go to "Make it" and load the mat into the machine and make sure you have the machine set to "washi" setting.
3. Once all that is set up, hit "cut" and let the machine cut away.
4. To remove the vinyl from the mat, flip the mat over and pull the mat off the vinyl to help keep it from curling. 
5. Cut the image out just so you are dealing with that when weeding.
6. 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.
7. Then take your fingers and run it over the vinyl to help the vinyl stick. No need to seal it will cure after 72 hours.

Adding vinyl:

1. Cut a piece of transfer tape the same size of the image or just a little bigger than the image.
2. Peel the backing off the transfer tape and place it on top of the image and take your scraper and run it over the front and back to help adhere and help remove bubbles.
3. Remove the backing of the vinyl and the vinyl should be stuck to the transfer tape.
4. Place the vinyl onto the ornament and take the scraper and run it over to again help adhere and remove bubbles.
5. Slowly remove the transfer tape. If the vinyl has a hard time coming off just take your scraper and run it over again.
6. Add your twine or ribbon and it is ready to go!

Notes:

*to ungroup highlight everything, click and drag a box around the words. Then click "ungroup" this will ungroup every single letter. So now go back and click and drag over the word and then click on "group". Now each word can be moved to where you want. 

I hope this helped you create a special gift for family and friends. 

If you have any questions or comments pop them below, I would love to hear from you and see what you created!