We’re Making our own Wedding Favors to Save Money!

I’m getting married in early September! To save some money, my fiancé and I are making some things on our own. We decided to make our own coffee cup wedding favors with my Cricut! We are both obsessed with coffee so it’s the perfect wedding favor, who doesn’t drink coffee or tea??

We have a flower and deer themed wedding so I designed the cups using the Cricut design app!

Don’t let these pictures fool you, to be honest, using a Cricut is very time consuming and tedious (especially if you have 35 cups to make!!) So far I’ve put in about 13 hours but some of that was testing the cup design and changing the font several times. Originally I had script font for our names and it was terrible trying to weed the letters out!

Pro tip: if you’re using a Cricut and building anything that’s really small, use blocky, thick letters, trust me, it will make it MUCH easier!

Im using the Cricut joy but any Cricut can do this!

Here’s the steps for creating your the cups using a Cricut:

SUPPLIES:

✨ Cricut

✨ Cricut tools (such as the hook weeder and scraper)

✨ Coffee cups (or anything really!)

✨ Smart Permanent Vinyl (in the color you want your text)

✨ transfer tape

✨ standard grip mat

✨ rubbing alcohol and cotton balls

I purchased 10ft of vinyl and 20ft of transfer tape. I had just enough vinyl for 35 3”x2.5” designs!

✨STEP ONE:

Measure your cup to see how much space you have. Typically for a coffee cup you’ll want a 3”x2” or 3”x3” design.

Once you know how big you want your design. It’s now time to go to the Cricut Design App and build your design! They give you some free fonts or you can buy fonts. You can also upload some vectors from the internet. You can find a lot of vectors on google or purchase them (for cheap!) on Etsy! I designed mine from scratch using free Cricut font and my own set of deer antlers.

If you build the design on your computer you can also use any installed font to build your design!

Make sure your design is in the dimensions you measured for your cup.

✨STEP TWO:

Once your design is built, it’s time to cut it! I chose to do this on a mat because it’s easier. So I was able to use a space of 5.5”x12” (on the Cricut joy) and my design repeated 4 times on the mat, repeat your design as much as you can on the mat.

Click ‘make’ and follow the instructions on the app. Choose Smart Vinyl as your material. I would make sure to use more pressure when cutting though!

✨STEP THREE:

Once your designs are cut, you can now weed away the excess vinyl to display your design! Use the hook weeding tool and your fingers. This is the most tedious part, so that’s why I recommend chunkier font, it makes it so much easier!

✨STEP FOUR:

Cut the transfer tape to fit your mat or designs. Gently peel away the transfer tape from the white paper backing.

✨STEP FIVE:

Place the transfer tape on top of your designs. Use the scraper to press the contact paper on your vinyl design and also to get rid of any air bubbles.

Some people also use a hair dryer here to really adhere the tape to the vinyl but it’s not totally necessary.

✨STEP SIX:

Cut your designs out so they are all small individual designs for each cup.

✨STEP SEVEN:

Gently peel the contact tape off the white paper and place it on the cup where you want the design to go.

Do this really slowly. If the vinyl doesn’t stick to the contact tape, stick it back on the white paper and use the scraper again to press the vinyl on the contact tape.

You can also use the hook weeder here, if you pull the contact tape off and the vinyl stays on the white paper, use the hook to pull the vinyl off the white paper and place it on the contact tape.

*Make sure you have your entire design on the contact tape!

Once your design is on the cup, rub again (with the scraper) and gently pull the contact tape off!

If you make any mistakes it’s ok! You can always recut some parts of the design and add it later using this same process. A few times we missed a letter and had to do that!

We still have 14 more cups to make 🤦‍♀️ But it feels so good to give our guests handmade gifts!

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