The Best Design Tool Ever! {Cut Vinyl Ideas}

Trucks and laundry are on my mind this week!

Last month I got my Silhouette Cameo out of the closet. It sat on my dining room table all month. But something about September gets me rolling with project lists and blogging ideas.

So if any of you know what a Silhouette Cameo is, you know that it's AWESOME! It plugs right into your computer and cuts just about any font or shape you can create or download on a variety of mediums. It's definitely one of my Top 10 gifts! But I've never cut VINYL with it and have been dying to try!

Project #1: Pretty jar of DIY Laundry Detergent
This has been on my list forever. So while kid #1 was in preschool last week, #2 and I went to Walmart to pick up the ingredients. It only cost about $25, including the jar, and should last me 10 months.

The next day, I put #1 to work grating bars of soap and mixing the ingredients in a trash bag. I combined instructions from this blog and this one.  I then used a favorite font to create the cut vinyl design and applied it to the jar with transfer paper. Simple! And the perfect way to make our clothing look and smell lovely, at a bargain price!

DIY Laundry Detergent

Safe for HE washing machines

Ingredients

• 1 Box of Super Washing Soda 3 lb. 7 oz.
• 1 Box of Borax 4 lbs 12 oz. size
• 1 Box of Pure Baking Soda 4 lb.
• 3 bars of Castile soap 4 oz. (Amazon)
  
• 1 bar Fels Naptha soap 5.5 oz.
• 1 container of Oxy-Clean 1.3 lb 
• 1/3 package Epsom salt
• 3 T essentail oil (I used doTerra's Serenity, as well as Lavender and Eucalyptus)
  

Instructions

 

Finely grate the bar soap. Mix all the ingredients together and store in container of your choice. Use only 1-2 Tablespoons of detergent per load. 



Project #2: Boy's Room Trucks Theme
This one took a lot more thought and planning to figure out the right vinyl colors and truck shapes and then decide where I was putting them. I promised #1 when we moved into our house that his new room would have vehicles on the walls. I then scoured Etsy for what I pictured in my head, but wasn't able to find the perfect combination.

Fast forward 2 years and 4 months, and he finally has trucks on his walls! We're working on getting more construction vehicles on the opposite wall as well, because 3 is just not enough for a little boy's room! Diggers, forklifts and cranes coming right up! (I purchased two files containing four trucks each for .99 a piece from Silhouette's online store.)

What I learned from this project: 
1. Any vinyl will do, but Silhouette vinyl is the easiest to work with. Other vinyls stick to the transfer paper and are thinner. I also used the cutting mat, although Silhouette's video directions say not to. Without it, I couldn't keep the vinyl from slipping.

2. As soon as you put something on your kid's wall, they will decide they actually REALLY wanted something else. In this case, it turns out he REALLY wanted a RED firetruck. Well .... I could do a firetruck but nothing else in his room is red, so we're compromising with more construction vehicles and maybe I'll throw in a helicopter.

The last time I used my Silhouette was to make decorations for my in-law's 40th anniversary celebration over a year ago.

 
Next on my mind is a painted canvas using cut vinyl letters as stencils. Hopefully it won't take me another year to get my favorite tool out again!

~Erin