Personalized Grandparent Pillows With A Cricut Maker

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

Customize a cute pillow with their grandparent name to make the perfect personalized gift for grandparents! It’s easy to make with a Cricut Maker and some iron on!

I love giving (and receiving!) handmade gifts; even if it’s just a quick drawing my toddler scribbled on the back of a receipt with a single crayon, I still love it! Luckily, having my Cricut Maker makes it super simple to make awesome handmade and personalized gifts. Today’s tutorial shows you how to make personalized grandparent pillows customized with their grandparent name and grandkids’ names. It’s the perfect handmade grandparent gift for the holidays!

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You can always use your Cricut machine to make paper cards and gift tags for the holidays, but the Cricut Maker can cut over 300 hundred materials besides paper, from the most delicate tissue paper and fabric to the tough stuff like mat board, leather, and basswood. It’s perfect for any kind of handmade gift giving!

You can even have your Maker draw and write stuff for you with the Cricut pens, so you can personalize cards and envelopes to go along with your gifts. The Maker is such a versatile crafting machine, you’re only limited by your imagination!

How To Make Personalized Grandparent Pillows

My kids are the first grandkids on my side of the family, but my parents are honorary grandparents to some other amazing kids as well, so I thought a personalized grandparent gift with ALL the grandkids’ names on it would be perfect for them. My girls call my parents Nonna and Poppa, but you could easily switch the text to any grandparent name. And there’s plenty of room in the bottom section of the design to add as many grandkid names as you want; just add another row or two if you need to!

• Time spent doing stuff: 15 minutes
• Time spent waiting around: 5 minutes
• Total project time: 20 minutes

• iron on vinyl (in multiple colors)
• holographic iron on vinyl
• 18″x18″ pillow cover
• 20″x20″ pillow insert

• Cricut Maker
• Cricut EasyPress
• weeder tool

Start by opening the personalized pillow design I created in Cricut Design Space. Click the Customize button to open the design within the Design Space editor.

To customize the grandparent name or grandkids’ names, just double click on the text to bring up the text editor box.

Using iron-on with a Cricut is pretty easy, but if you want a refresher you can check out my simple step by step guide to cutting out heat transfer vinyl with a Cricut to get the details.

You can also resize or rearrange the design as needed to fit your specific project. Once you’re ready to cut, click the green “Make It” button at the top right to send the design to your Maker.

Mirror your design before sending it to the machine by clicking the “Mirror” toggle on each mat on the Prepare screen.

For the large grandparent names I used holographic mosaic iron on. Make sure you set your material to “Holographic Sparkle Iron-On Mosaic” and load the fine-point blade into the machine. Load the vinyl face down onto the cutting mat (you should be able to feel the texture of the dots on the “back” of the sheet that is facing up), then load it into the machine by pressing the Load/Unload button.

Start the cut by pressing the flashing Go button. When the cut finishes, press the Load/Unload button again to unload the mat.

Continue loading the rest of the mats until all pieces of the design are cut out. Just remember when you are ready to cut all of the other text to set the material to “Everyday Iron-On” instead of holographic.

While the machine is cutting out the pieces, you can pre-heat your EasyPress according to the settings in the Cricut Heat Guide. The heat guide will give you exact instructions depending on which kind of iron-on you are using and what material your pillow cover is made of, but for me I set the EasyPress to 330 degrees F.

Once all the pieces are cut out, carefully weed away the background vinyl using the weeder tool.

Pre-heat the pillow cover for 5 seconds, then position your text on your pillow cover. Press for thirty seconds, then turn the cover inside out and press again for thirty seconds.

Peel away the clear plastic liner from the vinyl, and your pillow cover is done!

Stuff the pillow insert into the cover, and you have an awesome personalized grandparent gift that any Nonna, Poppa, Grandma, Grandpa, MeeMaw, PopPop, Nana, Papa, or any other grandparent will love!

Want to share this project with your friends? Share to Facebook, Pinterest, or send the article by email—just click on any of the share buttons floating on the left, or find them at the top and bottom of this post.

Below is a printable version of this project; click the large “Print” button to print out the instructions. (It defaults to just printing the text in the instructions, no photos, to save you paper and printer ink!)

If you like this project, leave a review by clicking the stars or by clicking the Review button! That way I know which types of projects you guys like and which I should do more of!

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How To Make Personalized Grandparent Pillows

Customize a cute pillow with their special "grandparent name" to make the perfect personalized gift for grandparents! It's easy to make with a Cricut Maker and some iron on.

Active Time15 minutes mins

Cricut Cut Time5 minutes mins

Total Time20 minutes mins

Course: Crafts, Cricut Projects

Author: Jessi Wohlwend

Equipment

• Cricut Maker
• Cricut EasyPress 2
• weeder tool

Materials

• iron on vinyl in multiple colors
• holographic iron on vinyl
• 18″x18″ pillow cover
• 20″x20″ pillow insert

Instructions

• Open the personalized pillow design I created in Cricut Design Space.
• Click the Customize button to open the design within the Design Space editor.
  
• Double click on any of the text you wish to customize to bring up the text editor box.
• When you’re ready, click the green “Make It” button at the top right to send the design to your Maker.
• Mirror your design before sending it to the machine by clicking the “Mirror” toggle on each mat on the Prepare screen.
  
• Set your material to “Holographic Sparkle Iron-On Mosaic” and load the fine-point blade into the machine.
  
• Load the vinyl face down onto the cutting mat, then load it into the machine by pressing the Load/Unload button.
  
• Start the cut by pressing the flashing Go button.
• Press the Load/Unload button again to unload the mat when the cut is finished.
• Repeat until all pieces of the design are cut out. Just remember when you are ready to cut all of the other text to set the material to “Everyday Iron-On” instead of holographic.
  
• Pre-heat your EasyPress according to the settings in the Cricut Heat Guide. The heat guide will give you exact instructions depending on which kind of iron-on you are using and what material your pillow cover is made of.
• Carefully weed away the background vinyl from all pieces using the weeder tool.
  
• Pre-heat the pillow cover for 5 seconds, then position your text on your pillow cover.
• Press for thirty seconds, then turn the cover inside out and press again for thirty seconds.
  
• Peel away the clear plastic liner from the vinyl.
  
• Put your pillow insert into the pillow cover, and you’re done!

Disclosure: I received compensation from Cricut in exchange for my participation in this campaign, and my honest discussion of their products. But the Cricut Maker and, really, all Cricut products are seriously amazing and all opinions in this post are 100% my own. I would never write a post about something I didn’t think was useful or interesting for you guys, and Practically Functional will only publish sponsored posts for companies or products I love and believe in!