Decorating Bowls Using Our Cricut

I had been promising the boys we could decorate some plain white bowls we bought at The Christmas Tree Shops using my Circut and some vinyl.  I kept putting it off though since I have never used vinyl on anything.

I mean I used vinyl as a stencil a time or two when decorating canvas and I did made my wooden blocks using vinyl letters but I've never attempted to put vinyl on anything I wanted to wash or really USE.

After reading a few articles on how to adhere vinyl to ceramic mugs we just dove right in.

While I would have to have made a set of matching or even coordinating bowls I could tell that each boy had their own idea about what they wanted so I decided to just let them really personalize their bowls the way they wanted to.

We began by programming what we wanted onto the computer using the Cricut Design Space software.  Then used the Cricut maker to cut out the designs.

Once printed I taught the boys how to pick out those pieces not being transferred onto the bowl and then using transfer tape we transferred the vinyl from the Cricut mat to our bowls.

Once they had their vinyl in position they smoothed it to the bowls using a Cricut scraper. Both the picker and the scraper came in our set of basic tools.

Often I helped hold the bowl while they scraped and worked all the bubbles out of the vinyl. 

They were so proud of their completed bowls!

Alec has vines going all the way around his entire bowl; he first measured the dimension and figured out the circumference of the bowl to know how many (and what size) vines to print out. 

Ian just wanted the words Ice Cream in bold gold. 

Evan chose a fun font with the words Ice Cream and a scoop of ice cream right in the middle. 

After lunch I went back to the Cricut and finished decorating the other three bowls in the set.  I chose flip flops and some more ice cream words and sayings for my designs.

I slightly modified my cuttings; one set of sandals just looked so flat and plain that I lifted up the straps and cut them off.  

I just thought they stood out better that way.

Assorted blue and green flip flops all around the whole bowl at random.  

"Life is better in flip flops"

one more scoop with a scoop of ice cream right in the middle. 

We let our bowls sit for two days before using like most of the blogs recommended and we only plan on hand washing them.  I am hopeful that they'll last but question just how well the vinyl will stand up to use.

Does anyone else know??

Linking Up With: Craft Schooling Sunday,