Hey friends! Today I want to share with you two really great gifts that you can make using your Cricut machine for family members this year! These easy one-cut projects are incredibly simple and I promise that by following these steps, any Cricut user, new or experienced, can make them in minutes! DIY Christmas Gift Ideas to make with your Cricut!

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Project 1: Faux Suede Earrings

This gift is perfect for anyone on your list who loves to wear jewelry!

Supplies:

• Cricut Faux Suede Sampler
• EXPLORE AIR 2 MINT
• Multi Pen Set, Black
• Cricut® 12″ x 12″ StandardGrip Adhesive Cutting Mats, 2-pack
• Earring hooks and jump rings

I am going to walk this through step-by-step so that no matter your experience level you’ll be able to do this, but trust me, this is an EASY project and you’re going to love it!

Designing

The first thing you do is click on “Projects” in the Cricut Design Space™.

Next, search for “DIY Leather Earrings” and you’ll see this project pop up!

Click on the project and it will take you to this screen which shows you what is needed for this project. Remember you can always adjust the materials. I opted to use a thinner faux suede, so I didn’t need to StrongGrip cutting mat or deep blade. However, if you use actual leather you would need those things. Once you have looked through the list and determined that you have everything you need, click on “Make It”.

This will bring up the images on a canvas. I just made sure they were going to be the size that I wanted, then I clicked on “Continue”. This project is preset to write the designs, then cut the circle around them, so you don’t have to worry about setting all of that up. That’s one reason the Cricut Design Space Projects are such much fun to use! They are so easy!

Setting up Machine

Connect your machine if you haven’t already.

Alright, now just make sure you have your settings right. The main menu didn’t give me an option for faux suede, so I had to click on “View All”

Set your machine material selection knob to “Custom”.

Then scroll down to the leather section and click on “Faux Suede”. This just ensures that the machine settings are accurate for your material. Again, with the faux suede you just use the normal blade, you DO NOT need a deep cut blade.

Setting up Mat

Next put your faux suede onto your cutting mat. And find the marker you will use. You want this to be a fairly thin marker.

The software will remind you to add your black pen, like so.

Load your cutting mat when prompted.

Writing and Cutting

Finally, when prompted, click on the “Go” Cricut button, as you see here to start the writing and cutting!

Now just watch the magic in action! Just kidding. It is definitely fun to watch though. Whenever my kids hear my machine running they ask if they can come watch it write or cut. You’ll love it too!

As you can see, it just keeps writing until all the parts selected as “write” are finished.

And now it cuts! Hard to tell in this photo, but it is cutting a very thin line around all the circle images it just wrote. These really are super cool designs. I was thinking, written bigger, they’d make awesome coasters!

Peel off the excess faux suede. Then slowly peel your earrings off of the mat.

Now use some earring hooks and jump rings to make this official. I actually don’t have a leather punch, so I used a sharp screw to make a small hole in each circle to attach the jump ring.

And there you have it! Finished DIY Faux Suede earrings that would make a fantastic gift for anyone! 

Project 2: Faux Leather Customized Pencil Holder

This gift is perfect for the artist or young kid on your list!

Supplies:

• Cricut Explore Air 2
• Cricut® 12″ x 12″ StandardGrip Adhesive Cutting Mats, 2-pack
• Cricut Faux Leather
• Multi Pen Set, Black 

In  Cricut Design Space™, just click on the search bar and type in “Leather Pencil Holder”, them check your materials (again we’re using faux suede instead of leather) and click on “Make It”.

DESIGNING

The canvas will pop up with your cutting design for the leather holder. If you don’t want to customize it, you can literally just hit continue and go ahead and cut the leather! However, if like me you like to make a gift extra special by customizing it with your family member’s name, then follow the rest of these instructions.

Click on Text as shown below, and type in the text you want. I chose a simple Cricut Access Font called Avenida to add my son’s name “Will”.

Make sure that the text you have typed is set to WRITE not CUT.  You can do this on the right side of the screen, by clicking on this small icon. The pen icon indicates that part will be written, and the scissors icon indicates a cut file.

In order to Write AND cut in place, you need to make sure to ATTACH everything together. Otherwise when you send it to the final page it will separate the images. We want them to write then cut at the same time and don’t want to have to reload the page. This ensures everything is lined up perfectly.

Again, click on faux suede in the materials settings. Make sure the knob on your machine is set to Custom.

WRITING AND CUTTING

All set up, now click Continue.

Load your pen when prompted. Watch the machine write your custom message, then cut the entire leather pencil holder.

All cut out! Now just weed out the excess faux leather, and peel off these sections.

ALL FINISHED!

Wrap up your pencils within the holder and use the two thin strips that were cut out to tie around your brand new Faux Leather Customized Pencil Holder!

What do you think of these gift ideas? I hope you love them as much as I do! The Cricut can do so many amazing things! If you like this project, please pin this image and share! 

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