My oldest son is moving on from our preschool, and I'm not just sad that he's growing up too fast (though he is), I'm also sad to see this perfect, happy chapter of his life end, where he was surrounded by a team of incredible teachers. A few of them have mentioned how they love how I monogram #allofthethings in R's backpack with vinyl, so I thought what better way to bring in the summer than with a personalized tumbler? A mason jar one, because they are so darn cute, and in teal because it's the best color ever. They can end the year sipping sangria out of that bad boy as they soak up sunny days with no preschoolers. To up the ante, I got together with a few of my girlfriends and fellow preschool mommies to stuff the cups with gift cards to Target and Dutch Bros. (our favorite local coffee drive thru), because Target and coffee are life.
So! How to do it? I bought the cups here on Amazon. I've actually been using this cup myself all day every day for two years now. Mine is monogrammed with my initials in vinyl, and it has held up pretty well! I throw it in the dishwasher about once a week (don't judge), and the vinyl has stayed in place with no problem. The vinyl I use is the industry standard, Oracal 651 in glossy white. It holds up and wears way better than the Silhouette brand, in my opinion, and you'll want something that has a strong bond if it's going to go through the dishwasher. And all of the heart eyes for white on teal!
In my Silhouette Design Studio, I browsed my favorite fonts, and landed on a cute, chubby script called Cilantro Leaf by ScrapNFonts (note: this one is personal use only!)
I wanted it to say the teachers' names as the kids call them, "Teacher Jaime," for example. After playing around with the sizing and measuring the cups, I decided four inches was going to be as wide as I could make the lettering. I sized each name a little differently since some were longer (Stephanie) and others were shorter (Dana), and I wanted the names to cover the space without wrapping too far around. The word Teacher ended up being smaller, placed either left, center, or right on top of the first name depending on what looked best. Last step was to weld the names so the font flowed together like a script, then squish them all together onto one 12"x12" sheet to cut all at once. Wait! One more step. Create a box around each name so you can weed each one separately!
As for cut settings, I set my material in Design Studio to "Vinyl - Silhouette Brand," and it called for setting my blade to level 1. But with Oracal brand vinyl, I find that it's a bit thicker, and a 2 is perfect. I used my premium cut blade (because it lasts 10x longer than the aptly named ratchet blade!), and set it to cut level 2. Even knowing these settings, I did a quick test cut in the upper left hand corner just to be sure. The test piece pulled up beautifully (clean cut vinyl, no backing cut). Hit "Send to Silhouette" and wait for your goodies to emerge!
I sat under some good lighting and weeded out the names, slapped some transfer tape onto the whole sheet, and cut each cup's lettering out. Peel that transfer tape back diagonally, making sure all the little dots on all the i's stick with their mamas. Time to line it up. This part is intimidating! Once that Oracal 651 is on, it is ON! No replacing and moving around. Gotta get it right the first time. My trick is to cradle the cup in my lap between my legs with the cup's straw sitting straight up and down in the cup. Using two hands, I center the vinyl on the straw, say a prayer, and stick it on. I use my scraper tool to seal it, and pull the transfer tape off diagonally, taking care that all pieces stick to the cup. Run my hand over it to make sure it's all in the place, and we're done!
I put some tissue paper in each cup to prop up the gift cards, and we got all the kiddos to sign their names on a card that was tucked in there as well. In the end, the cups cost about $5.00 each to make.
While I was at it, I also helped R design a new vinyl sticker for his water bottle, too, since he feels like four years old is too big for Mickey Mouse. On to a Star Wars theme for my big boy!
Happy crafting!
Rox
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