DIY Rainbow Under The Sea Pillow Draw With a Cricut

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One of my favorite things about my Cricut is the “Write” function. Beautiful handwriting is not my strong point. My parents fondly tease me that I write like a 13 year old girl. I love having the option of typing out the words I want to say on a card, picking a handwriting style font, putting cardstock into my Cricut and having the machine do the work for me.

I recently gave my dad a card for Father’s Day. My mom read it and said “who’s wrote this?” I said “I did!” She looked at me not believing me. “…Well I kind of did!” I explained. “I typed the words into my Cricut and made them with my machine.”

Recently I received a GORGEOUS surprise from Cricut– Their Ultimate Fine Point Pen Set! Stunning right? Just look at all of those pretty rainbow colors! When I saw the pens I immediately though of the coloring sheets that I spotted recently in Cricut Access!

Some of these designs are meant to be printed on your printer (you can see the printer icon next to the “i” below some of the images.) Others can be made using the write function or even cut!

Normally when I use the write function I wait for the machine to tell me when to switch pens, but the coloring sheet designs are all designed in one color, so I decided to try something new– I paused the machine every 30-60 seconds, switched the pen, and then unpaused the machine! This gave my design a fun and colorful look.

With summer here, I love spending time outside in my favorite chair, reading and sipping on a yummy fruity drink. This project seemed like a perfect opportunity to make a new throw pillow for my outdoor space. I decided to go with a tropical theme, selecting the “Under the Sea Coloring Sheet” and pairing it with some Michael Miller Gold Fish Fabric. I had the Cricut draw the design on Cricut Printable Iron On Dark. I wasn’t sure if the pen ink would stick the heat transfer vinyl or slide right off, but it quickly absorbed and I didn’t have any streaking or smears.

Now this idea came straight out of my head, but let’s be honest, sometimes you want to create a project quickly and easily without having to dream something up and plan it out. That brings me to this month’s “Cricut Question Of The Month”.

Cricut Question of the Month: Will it be easy for me to use the Cricut software to create Make it Now projects?

Answer: Friends, this past month Cricut did something fabulous and made it possible to search Make It Now for the kind of project you are looking for instead of having to browse through categories!

This means you can go in and search for “pillow” and have 89 pillow projects pop up that are already pre-designed and ready to cut!

Once you decide which project you want to make, you click it and have the choice of either customizing the design or going straight to make it.

Click “Make It”, insert your material to be cut and within minutes you have a beautiful project 100% completed! Each Make It Now project has a material list, complete instructions and links to click for help and further instructions.

Basically, the hardest part about making a Make It Now project, is deciding which project you are going to make!

Ready to get started with my DIY Rainbow Under The Sea Pillow Drawn and Cut with the Cricut? Read on!

DIY Rainbow Under The Sea Pillow Drawn and Cut with the Cricut

Materials:

Cricut
Standard Grip Cutting Mat
Cricut Printable Iron On Dark
Ultimate Fine Point Pen Set
Pillow Case and pillow insert (Find my tutorial on how to sew an envelope pillow in 15 minutes here)
Iron
Optional: Scissors
My Under The Sea Pillow File (Find it here)

Directions:

Step 1: Open myUnder The Sea Pillow File (find it here). It is currently sized to perfectly fit the 8.5″ by 11″ Printable Iron On. However if you would like the design to be smaller, you can size the image down.

Step 2: Click “Make It”. Apply your Printable Iron On to the cutting mat and follow the instructions on screen.

Step 3: Put your first color pen in the pen holder and press Go. Press the Pause button (||) on your machine whenever you would like to change the color. Switch the pen and then press the Pause button again to resume the machine’s writing. I sat by my machine and watched the machine work, to decide when I wanted to press pause. Most of the time I pressed pause ever 60 seconds or so.

Step 4: When your machine is done writing and cutting, remove your work from your cutting mat. At this point you have a choice to make. I have the design cut with a circle around it, but at the last minute decided to take scissors and freehand a shape around the design.

Step 5: Turn on your iron and set it to the lowest setting. Iron your pillowcase to warm it, remove the backing from your design and place it on your pillowcase. Put the ironing paper that comes with the printable iron on material on top of your design and press using the instructions on the packaging.