DIY Unicorn Squad Graphic Shirt

When I was a child, I collected unicorns. Whenever anyone was buying me a gift, it would be a glass unicorn or something unicorn themed. I was obsessed. I recently became friends with a mom at school that also loved unicorns as a child and has continued her love of unicorns to this day. I know that this mom and I would have been great friends if we had met each other as children. I can imagine the two of us, holed up in my bedroom for hours, playing unicorns. 

This same friend, loves to craft and recently asked me if I thought she should get a Cricut. Whenever I hear this question my response is always the same “Yes!!! What are you waiting for?!?!” My Cricut is my most used craft item in my craft room and is getting an extra workout right now in the lead up to Christmas. She said to me “I just don’t know if I would use it often enough. What could I make with it.” 

I pulled up the list of the 100+ materials that the Cricut can cut and showed them to her then added “But even if you only used it to make shirts for your kids, it would be worth it!

Her face immediately lit up and she said “Could I make a unicorn shirt?”

Of course you can make a unicorn shirt! Today’s design was inspired by this mom. I hope she likes it and I hope you do too. 

Three of the things that I love about creating with Cricut are:

1. There are over 60,000 images available in their image library. Over 30,000 of them you can access for free with a Cricut Access membership and others are available at a small fee (usually 99 cents per image). 
2. You can upload your own images to Cricut! It’s so easy to do. Today I thought I’d walk you through this process with step by step photos for anyone who hasn’t done it before. 
3. The combination of having access to Cricut’s design library, combined with being able to upload your own designs means that the possibilities are ENDLESS. 

When I sat down at my computer to design this shirt, the first thing I did was search Cricut to see if they had a unicorn image. I wasn’t disappointed. There were many to choose from. 

Cricut accesses all the fonts on your computer and lets you cut and write those letters (using their pen attachment), but when working with fancier handlettering/calligraphy fonts I sometimes like doing my words in a program outside of Cricut and uploading them to Cricut Design Space.  That’s what I ended up doing with the #UnicornSquad words on this shirt. After I made the shirt Bean said to me, I really like it, but I wish that the hashtag wasn’t in front of Unicorn and I kind of wish it said Team Unicorn instead of Unicorn Squad. It would be so easy to make those small changes for the next shirt. 

Ready to learn how to make our DIY Unicorn Squad shirt? Let’s get started. Read on for the full instructions.

DIY Unicorn Squad Graphic Shirt

Materials:

– Cricut Explore
– Standard Grip Cutting Mat
– Cricut Iron-On in your favorite colors (I used Pink and Silver Glitter Iron On.)
-Iron
-T-Shirt, Long Sleeved Shirt or Tank Top

Directions:

Step 1: Pick the wording that you want on your shirt. I’ve included #, Team, Unicorn and Squad below. Right click and select “save image”. Want to know how simple it was for me to make these? I typed them into a word document and screenshot them! Easy peasy!

Step 2: Open Cricut Design Space and select Create New Project.

Step 3: Click on Upload Image in the right hand side of the screen. Then click on Upload Image in the center of the screen. 

Step 4: Upload your image. Select Simple Image and then click Continue. 

Step 5: Click on all of the areas that you want cut away so that the blue and white checkered boxes appear. So in this case, everywhere where there isn’t letter. One click in the white box that surrounds the word “Team”, one click in the little loop of the T, one click in the center of the E and one click in the center of the A. If you want to check to make sure you got everything you can click the preview button to see what your cut will look like. Click continue. 

Step 6: Click “Save as a Cut Image”, name your image and then click “Save”. 

Step 7: Select the image you just made (and any other images you’ve uploaded and want to insert), and then click “Insert Images”.

Step 8: Click “Insert Images”, search for “unicorn”, select the unicorn you would like and click “Insert Images”.

Step 9: Size your images to the size you would like them to cut out. Select the color of the image by clicking on the image in the task bar on the right hand side and then clicking the color.

Step 10: Click “Go”. Make sure that you click “Mirror Image” in both boxes in the left hand side if cutting from iron on vinyl. This doesn’t matter as much with images but is a must for letters otherwise your words will cut backwards. 

Step 11: Click “Go” again. Prep your cutting mat with the vinyl making sure that the shiny side of the vinyl (that will be up on the tshirt) is facing down. Select your Cricut, turn your dial to the material that you are using, load your mat into the machine and click the flashing Cricut C on the machine to start the cutting. Switch mats to the second color of vinyl when the first mat is finished cutting. Weed your vinyl (aka take away all of the vinyl that you don’t want on the shirt, leaving just the vinyl that you want ironed to the shirt attached to the sticky plastic vinyl backing). Iron onto the shirt according to vinyl instructions. 

And that’s it! You’re all done and you have a gorgeous shirt to keep for yourself, your kids or to give as a gift!

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Tell me… Do you have a Cricut? Do you make DIY shirts on it? Who would you make a shirt for if you had a Cricut and what design would you put on the shirt?

Disclosure: This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. As with all articles on Hello Creative Family, the thoughts, opinions and text are all mine.