DIY Body Positivity Hashtags Leggings Made With The Cricut

Embrace the curves, love your body, and encourage others to feel the self love with these awesome DIY Body Positive Hashtags Leggings. Perfect for plus sized fitness fashion, this easy project is fun and playful. Made using the Cricut Explore or Cricut Maker and ultra stretchy Cricut SportFlex Iron-On. 

I’ve been on quite a journey since the beginning of 2018. On January 2nd I started a 90 day fitness challenge. I went into the challenge with the hopes of transforming my body, never did I expect that I would transform my mind. I have struggled with my self image for as long as I can remember, and today, on day 86 of the challenge I can honestly say I feel healthier mentally then I can ever remember feeling. You can read more about my journey over the past few months and my epiphany moments here and here but today I want to concentrate on body positivity. 

Beauty comes in so many shapes and sizes, and while I’ve always believed that to be true about others, until recently I never really believed it to be true about myself. When my goal changed from transforming my body, to transforming my mind one of my action plans was to fill my mind with beauty that was outside of the supermodel version of beauty that I had grown up believing in. 

As I started digging and going down the rabbit hole of plus sized models I found a whole world of amazing women who have bodies who I can identify with and who are supporting each other and building each other up. 

Probably the most identifiable plus sized model in the world is the incredibly beautiful Ashley Graham. She’s the first plus sized beauty I started following on Instagram (follow me on Instagram here). Within days of following her she shared some of her favorite plus sized beauties in her instagram stories. I started following those gorgeous women and was amazed to see how often each of these women was tagging other women, building the community and making huge strides towards breaking through beauty standards. A few of my favorites are Tabria Majors, Gabi Fresh, Hunter McGrady, Cherella Rowena, La’Tecia Thomas and Megan Jayne Crabbe.

I don’t know if it’s just because I have been so heavily immersed in surrounding myself with these amazing women for the past two months, but I feel  like we might be approaching a tipping point. A point where seeing women who have bodies that are similar to mine (and all other sizes) in mainstream advertising will be as common as seeing women who are a size 0-4 in the pages of a magazine and on TV. I also hope that this happens with men as well, because men have body issues too! 

Can you imagine a world where 13 year old girls aren’t obsessed with the numbers on the scale and instead feel good about the skin they are in because they are surrounded by so many different versions of what beautiful looks like?

I know that I’m not alone with my body image issues. Since I started writing about my journey I’ve received so many messages and emails from people who have grown up self loathing and are fighting to get past it. I’ve had friends hug me after reading my story and we’ve shed tears together as we fight to release all of that bulls**t that has built up in our heads for years and years and years. 

Surrounding myself with positive, relatable, role models has helped me to embrace my curves and love my body.

Recently my friends at Cricut told me that they are releasing a new line of SportFlex Iron-On that promises to stretch with your curves. I knew immediately that I wanted to be involved with the launch and knew instantly what I would make. 

Out of all of my body image issues, the area of my body I’ve struggled with the most is my legs. I have permanent cankles, have the thickest calves that you’ve ever seen and my thighs… well let’s just say they are thick. I never wear dresses that are above the ankle and have always tried to camouflage my legs by wearing plain black leggings with no designs on them. I didn’t want to draw attention to my legs. 

In the past few weeks I’ve started to embrace my thick legs and have even looked online at a few pairs of patterned leggings. I decided though that the first pair of leggings that I wanted to rock is by turning a pair of my black leggings into DIY body positivity leggings by covering them in body positive hashtags using my Cricut and SportFlex Iron-On. 

To put the Cricut SportFlex Iron-On to the test I used the tightest black leggings that I could find in my closet. The SportFlex is made for active wear like nylon, polyester and spandex so I had no doubt that it would stick to the leggings, but what I really wondered was if my design would distort as it was stretched around my thick legs or even worse crack and split. 

I was shocked by how the SportFlex performed. There was no distortion, or splitting! I will be using it for all of my clothing designs from now on! Cricut is so sure of their product that they’ve created the Cricut StrongBond Guarantee, promising long lasting results that stick! 

It was also super easy to weed because of the nice stretch that it has! 

I used my handy dandy Cricut EasyPress to apply the SportFlex. If you make things using iron on and heat transfer vinyl I promise you the EasyPress will change your life! It makes the whole process of getting professional results so much easier. The temperature is even across the heating plate which makes the heat transfer vinyl really stick to whatever you are adhering it to. 

Cricut has just come out with an EasyPress Mat that I can’t wait to get my hands on! It will mean that I can get rid of the towel that I use for doing my iron on that lives on my craft room table! 

Two more of my must haves for iron on projects? The Cricut Iron On Protective Sheet and the Cricut Brayer Tool! You can read why these are in my craft room must haves here. 

I hope that you love this project, that it inspires you and that if you struggle with body image issues that this post helps you on your own journey to loving your body. 

Read on for my DIY Body Positivity Hashtags Leggings project.

PS. Love the shirt I’m wearing with these leggings? Find my DIY Body Positive Word Art Workout Top here. 

[hr gap=”30″]DIY Body Positivity Hashtags Leggings[hr gap=”30″]

Materials:

–My Body Postitivity Hashtag Leggings Design File

-Leggings

-Measuring tape (I used the one from the Cricut Sewing Kit)

–Cricut SportFlex Iron-On in your favorite color (I used metallic gold)

–Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore 

-Iron or  Cricut EasyPress

–Regular Grip Cutting Mat

–Weeding tools

Optional: Cricut Bright Pad for weeding, Cricut Iron On Protective Sheet, Cricut Brayer Tool

Directions:

Step 1: Log into Cricut Design Space and then open my Body Postitivity Hashtag Leggings Design File. Measure your legs with your measuring tape and decide how big you want each of the body positive hashtags to be. Adjust the sizes and then click “Make It”. If you’d like to add or delete any hashtags or play with fonts now is your chance. 

Step 2: Click the “Mirror” button on each cutting mat and play around with the placement of each of the hashtags if you would like. 

I was able to make all of the words fit on one cutting mat by turning some of the words so they were vertical instead of horizontal. 

Click “Continue”. If using a Cricut with a dial (aka not the Cricut Maker) set the dial to custom. Select SportFlex Iron-On as your material. 

Place your SportFlex Iron-On on your cutting mat with the shiny side facing down. Load your Cricut with the mat and then click the cute little Cricut C to start cutting! 

Step 3: Use your weeding tools to weed away the excess SportFlex including the iron-on around your words… 

…and all the center bits inside your letters and hashtags. 

Next cut each of the words so that they are separate from the others. 

Step 4: Now comes the super fun part! Deciding where you want each of the words to go on your leggings! Don’t forget to put words on the back too. Lay out your leggings, pre-heat them with your EasyPress or iron, place one of your words (or more depending on how close they are placed) on the leggings, put your Cricut Iron On Protective Sheet (or your own protective sheet) on top and press. Press again from the opposite side of the leggings (aka heat from the back). I like using my braying tool to really push the iron-on down between each press. Repeat until all of your hashtags are attached to the pants. 

Allow your leggings to cool and then remove the protective plastic from each design. 

Viola! You have a gorgeous pair of DIY Body Positivity Hashtags! Go out and rock them girl and slay the day! 

Don’t forget you can find my DIY Body Positive Hashtag Word Art Tank Top Tutorial here! 

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

[hr gap=”30″]Tell me… Have you ever tried customizing clothing with your Cricut? Have you ever struggled with your self image? I’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment. [hr gap=”30″]

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Disclosure: This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. As with every article on Hello Creative Family, the thoughts, opinions and text are 100% my own. 

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