How to Make Kid's Canvas Name Bags with Large Cricut Easy Press

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

If you are looking for an easy first project with your Cricut Easy Press, then these Kid’s Canvas Name Bags are just the project you’ve been looking for to make.

If you were like us the first time you saw your Cricut Explore Air 2 and Easy Press, you may have been a little intimidated or even nervous.

Luckily, there’s easy projects to do that can make the process, quick, easy, and painless.

The reason I wanted the easy press, is because I love the idea of vinyl projects; however, certain things, I wanted it to look like it was seamlessly on there instead of raised like you get with vinyl projects. Luckily, Cricut makes brand new infusible ink vinyl that allows for this to happen perfectly.

I know that most people like to do t-shirts for their first Easy Press project. It makes sense. I think most projects in general that people see are t-shirts, so it only makes sense that it must be an easy first project.

However, I thought a canvas bag made more sense. Why?

Bags are stiffer/sturdier then shirts so less opportunity to move around or slip messing up the transfer
Don’t have to worry about sleeve and make sure they aren’t in the way
Allows for a little bit of error.
- If I did happen to slip, I’d be able to play off a slight blip in a bag. But a shirt, you could clearly tell when wearing.

One of the reasons that I love using Cricut so much is that I am able to view tutorials that walk me through step by step what I need to do. This project was no exception.

I used this tutorial by Cricut to walk me through everything I needed to do.

The first thing I needed to do was create my design in Cricut Design Space. I just wanted names so I wrote the names and chose the font I wanted. I chose Wildflower for this project. I measured the space I wanted the bag to fit on and then expanded the letters in order to be accurate (in this case 9 1/2″ for Serenity and a little smaller for Storm).

Pro Tip: The letters will not be touching when you initially type out the word. In order to get them to touch, adjust the letter spacing. Once you have them touching, click Weld on the bottom right.

When it is time to print your project some quick tips for doing this type of project.

Make sure you click mirrored image. You need it to print this way so it goes on correctly to the bag using the infusible ink.
Since you are using infusible ink, if you are also using a Cricut Explore Air 2, you will turn your dial to custom and then select Infusible Ink as your material.
If you do not do #2, the machine will not cut through the entire material and you will not have a clean cut
Make sure to follow the tutorial above, in regards to heating the item and rolling clean with a lint roller.

Once your word(s) are cut, use your weeding tool to remove any excess material. The only thing that should be left on the sticky side is your actual word.

Use your weeding tool to remove any excess pieces around letters like O, T, S, and Y. *For reference, you can see the excess material in the y in the photo above that hasn’t been removed yet.

Follow the steps in the tutorial above for layering order of the butcher paper and time and temperature settings.

It’s really important in this step that you do not move the Easy Press and instead you keep it as still as possible. Moving it can cause the ink to move.