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These cute Christmas tea towels are a quick and easy beginner project for the Cricut Explore Air cutting machine! Just add heat transfer vinyl, and your design options are nearly endless!

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

circuit explore air machine

Last week I introduced you to my newest cutting machine, the Cricut Explore Air. Today I’m using the same techniques to create these totally adorable Christmas tea towels which ALSO happen to make a great gift idea!

merry and bright svg file in cricut design space

To start, I opened up The Cricut Design Space and started a new project. The Cricut Design Space Image Library includes over 60,000+ images that you can choose from, so it’s easy to start designing your  project in no time at all! Just click to select the image that you wish to work with, and the software will insert it into a new project document. I chose these awesome hand-lettered “Merry Christmas” and “Merry and Bright” designs for my tea towels and arranged them on the project document to fit my sheet on heat transfer vinyl.

cricut explore air dial settings

One of my favorite features of the Explore Air is the dial settings (you don’t have to worry about manually changing the blade depth or remembering which depth matches up to each material!). With the Cricut Explore Air, you simply turn the dial to select the material that you are working with, and the machine takes care of the rest – easy peasy! For this project, set the dial to “Iron-on” and you’re ready to cut!

cricut cutting heat transfer vinyl

Place a sheet of heat transfer vinyl onto the cutting mat (shiny side down), load it into the machine, and hit the cut button (don’t forget to mirror the image since we’re working with heat transfer vinyl!). 

weeding merry and bright vinyl design

Use the Cricut Weeder Tool to remove the excess vinyl pieces from the design.

adhering vinyl design to tea towels

I arranged the vinyl on top of my neatly folded tea towel, covered it with a piece of cloth (another tea towel, actually!), and ironed it according to the directions on the package.

peeling the backing off the transfer tape of design

Once the heat transfer vinyl is firmly adhered to the fabric, peel away and discard the plastic backing.

added polka dots to merry and bright tea towel

I slid a piece of cardstock underneath the top layer of the towel and used metallic fabric paint in gold, silver, and champagne to add some shiny polka dots. Allow the paint to dry completely before removing the protective layer of paper underneath!

cute diy christmas tea towels

Easy peasy! These would make a super fun holiday hostess gift!

adorable christmas tea towels

If you like this idea, don’t forget to pin it!

quick and easy christmas tea towels

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