Hi everyone, it’s Letitia. I’m DIYing my way through my first home,
and I’m thrilled to be partnered with Cricut today to show you some really unique
DIY ways to do wall art in your home. We often think of buying prints,
but I really think that adding a personal touch is what really makes your home, your home.
This was my first attempt at the Cricut machine ever, and I was prepared with a full work suit.
I’ve always known about Cricut, I just never understood the magnitude of what you
can do with one. And then when I was doing research, I fell down a deep. dark. hole.
For this video I’m using three out of over 300 materials that you can cut on a Cricut Maker.
As a more 3D DIY, I have stiff art board that I put to the test on the Cricut.
I placed it on a strong grip mat. My original plan was to stack the three homes that Stefan and I
have lived in together. It started with our first apartment, which was most definitely illegal,
where our entrance was the sliding glass doors of the backyard. Unfortunately it
didn’t quite translate as well as I’d hoped. Is this, would you say this is confusing?
What is it? I think that's the problem. It needs to be more defined.
Sorry honey. No I needed to hear it. So, I took a few steps back and just kept it minimal with
the outline of our current home. Glue gun never works on fabric, but conveniently this time around
it gripped permanently. I was just lucky that I had recently hemmed my curtains,
so I used some scrap to rewrap the base, and then glued the final pieces of the house on.
I also customized this groovy home image found on design space. As you've seen on my updated channel
banner, this is my favorite font right now. By clipping the word home and copy pasting it
several times, I also made an elongated shadow for some dimension on the text that I think will pop.
The Cricut transfer tape is super helpful because it has a grid printed over top
so you can easily match up your layers exactly where you want it. There are so many helpful
tutorials Cricut offers to make sure that you can have a smooth project from beginning to end,
and I have a link in my description of all the new materials that I've used on all these projects.
This would make a sweet entryway piece. I try to keep text minimal at home,
but with the right font, you can express so much of what you want your home to say about you.
It’s also a nice perspective, since I’m inside the house all the time,
to be reminded that this is our whole house. Maybe I'll just make it a three-piece series so that I
could showcase all the homes that we lived in. I switched to a rotary blade for this next project,
because I’m going to be cutting fabric, something I’m very excited to continue working with in the
future with Cricut. Expressionist organic shapes are really popular right now, and
I prepped a canvas with a light off white wash, keeping the acrylic kind of sludgey and unmixed.
On Design Space, I found a lovely fern cut out. I’ve saved so many images for future projects,
that it got quite difficult to make a decision, and I’m a really decisive person.
On their special fabric grip mat, I placed a scrap piece of cotton cut to size.
Denim would work lovely for this, so save your cut hems. I was hoping to have cobalt blue,
but in the spirit of recycling odds and ends, this made do. Send to cut, and wait for the magic.
Because this is a cutting that has so many legs, and the cotton is so floppy, I used transfer tape
to pick it up. I learned this in my Cricut deep dive, to flip your mat over and peel your mat
off the cutting instead of the other way around. This prevents your edges from curling. I applied
fabric glue all over, before placing onto the canvas. No fuss, and a perfect application.
Something that I couldn’t have achieved by scissors or an x-acto knife is getting these crazy
precise and sharp edges on fabric. This treatment invites you to look closer, and you can appreciate
the texture fabric can offer. It’s a fun way to experiment with a different medium for art,
and with the Cricut, I can imagine making really cute appliqués with this technique as well.
Cricut’s Design Space has swathes and swathes of images and typography available. I started
my process by looking up hands, but because my mirror is oval and I needed to make very exact
angles with the arms, I had to move it over to my computer to finish off customizations. I made
long noodley arms mocked up on an oval that’s to scale. Back over on design space, I sliced
and arranged the arms over two squares to map out how I can cut strategically over two Cricut mats,
that are 12x12. I had to scale down the arms slightly, and cut a test.
It’s always good to test, and from that I realized that since I did scale it down,
I needed to make the arms a little longer so that they kept extending past the edges of the mirror.
From there I was ready to cut onto my permanent vinyl. Cricut offers endless possibilities to cut,
score, draw, engrave, and make wavy lines all in one. You just select the material you’re cutting,
the required effect with the tool you need, and press go. It was magical to watch my design
go from computer into something tangible, within amount of short time. There’s just something
very methodical about weeding around your vinyl, and peeling it onto your chosen surface. There’s
no better way to apply than to do it slowly, using the scraper to smooth out bubbles.
For any parts that were disconnected, I matched them up almost seamlessly,
and you don’t even notice it when you take a step back.
I let the arms trail off, flipped over the mirror, and used the frame as a guide to trim off excess.
There's really a big moment right now for statement mirrors in home decor,
except that it's quite pricey for just a single decor item. I wanted to show that there are ways
to bring traditional shapes and objects to now. Oval mirrors aren’t even really my style, and
this is now going somewhere prominent in the home. It adds an element of
fun and kitsch to the room that I love. Cricut really lit up that crafting bug in
me. I feel like I leveled up on my crafting game, and I can't wait to incorporate more
into my future projects. Even Stefan is super excited about it because he's talking about
mold making and working with fiberglass, so this is definitely going to be a shared item
in our home. If you recreate any of these items please tag me on instagram
@letitiakiu because I would love to repost your recreations. Make sure you're subscribed with
notifications turned on so that you don't miss the next DIY and I will see you guys next time. Bye!