(Daycare parents unite!) Honestly, I get that I don’t want anyone else to be drinking out my kids water bottle – they share enough germs as is – but the shoes – is it really necessary to label the shoes?

Random tangent aside, here is how I decided to try and make my life easier. 

Print then cut! I use this cricut universal pen holder and a sharpie to make my name tags on vinyl. Super easy, super quick and if it comes off or starts to fade, I can quickly whip up a new one, or just have a little stockpile from making them last time. I usually make multiple sizes when I do it and use names and initials as necessary. 

Here are my step by step instructions: 

• Open the Cricut Design Space application and start a new project

• Pick a shape and make it the size you want.. I prefer the free shapes in design space but choose whatever you’d like.  You can get real creative with fancy shapes for your labels !

•  Begin a “text” and pick a writing font – I used ‘High Tide’ for these, but I have also used ‘Poker Night’ in the past and that one works well too. 
• Write the name and resize it so that it will fit within the footprint of your shape. 

• Move the writing into the shape – I like to do this by selecting both shapes and using “align”. This allows you to center the text within the shape.

• Then attach!

• Finally, “Make it”

This is a super simple method of making quick Cricut name tags and labels. While your at it and going through the effort, make sure you print out exras so that they can be used on other items or to replace damaged ones.

The post Easy Cricut Name Tags and Labels appeared first on Caitlin's Craft Corner.

One area in particular that becomes frustrating for Cricut customers is the attachments required to hold varying writing devices used in their projects that require putting down ink to paper. For these type of projects users have a couple of options. They can buy custom adapters that are designed for specific pen makes and models or they can dive deeper into the Cricut ecosystem and purchase proprietary Cricut pens that fit into the device.

In my never ending pursuit to make crafting accessible and affordable, I used my engineering background to design a helpful tool to enable Cricut users to use any type of writing device in their projects. This attachment has the ability to replace the use of hundreds of different pen adapters and provides an easy to use system to quickly change between writing utensils.

Here are the details:

• Cricut Compatibility: Maker, Maker 3, Explore, Explore 3, Explore Air, Explore Air 2, Expression
• Pen Sizes: Fits pens up to 0.5 inch (12.2mm) in Diameter

How to Use:

• Install the Universal Pen Holder per the instructions of the Cricut software. Typically this involves, opening the clamp, removing any adapter that may already be present, replacing it with the Universal Pen Holder and closing the clamp.

• Feed your project mat and paper into the machine so its positioned under the Universal Pen Holder. This can be done by using the arrows button to load the paper and mat into the machine.
• Push down onto the tool head to get it into its “writing position” closest to the paper.
• With the tool head held down into this position load your pen into Universal Pen Holder and let it come into contact with the paper below, do not apply any downward pressure on the pen. Ensuring the pen is straight up and down, tighten the thumbscrew on the Universal Pen Holder to lock the pen into place.

• Release the tool head
• Enjoy the use of your pen in your next project!

The Universal Cricut Pen Holder can be purchased in here in our shop. Here is a video of the use of the product .:

The post Cricut Universal Pen Holder appeared first on Caitlin's Craft Corner.