Personalize Your Water Bottles with Cricut Maker!!

I recently purchased a Cricut Maker, and my first vinyl project was making personalized Batman water bottle decal labels for my Batman-obsessed son. I transformed  Contigo water bottles by personalizing them with my son’s name.

I’ll give you a quick walk-through of what I used to decorate these cups and the basic process of how to create a simple single-colour design featuring a shape with letters appearing in the negative space.

Video Tutorial: Make Personalized Vinyl Water Bottle Labels with Cricut Maker

FYI: These are just for personal use, so I’m not selling these nor would I suggest selling cups featuring logos or characters that you don’t own. 

Supplies for Water Bottle Vinyl LabelsSupplies for Making Personalized Water Bottle Labels with your Cricut Maker

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a little commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase. 

How to Make the Label Design in Cricut Design Space

First, I created the design. I actually made this in Photoshop first and imported it into Design Space, but you can easily create it directly in Design Space. I’ll show you how.

Start by inserting a solid one-colour shape into Cricut Design Space. You can either use one of Cricut’s images or built-in shapes, or you can  upload your own. If you’re looking for inspiration, try searching for “Silhouette” in Design Space under the “Images” tab.

Your goal will be to find an image that has a plain white background and one solid colour shape.  It’s better if the the design in simple rather than having a lot of cut outs.

Since Cricut didn’t have Batman images available, I imported a copy of the logo.

How to Upload a Custom Image to Design Space

Step 1: Click on the “Upload” tab and choose an image from your computer or device. Since the image is one colour, choose “Simple” for the image type when prompted.

Step 1: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 2:
Click on the white background to make it transparent. If there are any other white areas on your shape / silhouette, click on all of them until they’re replaced with the transparent grey and white grid.

Step 2: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 3: Choose “Save as a Cut Image”

Step 3: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 3B: Select the recently uploaded image and click the “Insert Images” button. Step 3b: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 4: Now the image is on the canvas, and you can see in the right side bar that there is one cut layer. Step 4: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

 

Step 5: Use the text tool to put some text on top of your shape in a font of your choice. Change the colour to white so you can see the placement. Resize the text to fit inside the shape with room around the letters.

Step 5: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 6: Select both the text and shape layers by shift clicking the objects.  You’ll see in the right side bar that both layers are highlighted in darker grey. Then click the Splice button at the bottom of the right side bar.

Step 6: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 7: You’ll see that there are now 3 layers: one white layer of your text, one black layer of your text, and the shape excluding the text.

Step 7: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 8: Right click on both of the text layers and choose Delete. Now you’re left with just the one layer to cut.

Step 8: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Step 9: All that’s left to do is resize the shape to your desired size, but either dragging the resize icon or manually setting the width or height under the Size options in the top property bar. Measure the water bottle or other object you’re putting the vinyl decal on to decide how big or small you want it.

Step 9: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space Step 10: How to Make a Vinyl Name Label Cut Out in Cricut Design Space

Cutting the Vinyl Decal

Time to cut the vinyl! I used the green standard Cricut mat with Oracal 651 vinyl. I only loaded up the mat with a rectangle worth of vinyl big enough to cover the design according to the mat preview in Cricut Design Space.

When sending the project to the Cricut, I used the preset for Vinyl.

Preparing the Vinyl Decal Label

Carefully peel off the negative space vinyl. For internal pieces that need to be removed, use the Cricut weeding tool to pick them off.

Now we’ll need to apply a piece of transfer tape to the top side of the design.  Peel the backing off the transfer tape then apply the transfer tape sticky side down to the top of the decal.  I used my Cricut scraper to make sure the transfer tape was really adhered.  If you don’t have a scraper, you could use a credit card.

Peel off the transfer tape carefully, making sure that all those little inner pieces of vinyl are sticking to the transfer tape and not being left behind.

Line up the design onto your cup, and carefully press it into place. Again, I used the scraper to help make sure there were no bubbles.

Wait 24-48 hours before using to make sure the vinyl has cured, and enjoy!

Care Instructions

Hand wash, do not soak; do not use for 24-48 hours to allow the vinyl glue to cure.

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