The Wedding Diaries #6: Here Comes the DIY Bride
I think it could be time to ramp up these Wedding Diaries posts, as time is ticking along. So much is happening! In February, I invested in a Cricut Explore Machine and a Canon Pixma Printer in an attempt to become a bit more hands-on with the Wedding planning. As I’m sure you can imagine, there is so much to be done in the next few months, but I have decided to become somewhat of a DIY Bride. I’m not sure if this will help or just add 10000x more things to do.
I had been eyeing up the Cricut Explore Machine for probably the last six months. Initially, I thought it was too complicated to work out how to use and was also quite expensive. Once I had fully looked into the cost and how it actually probably would save money in the long run, I then turned to TikTok. Of course, TikTok is the main source of any information, but I watched 100’s of tutorials on how to use it and decided to take the plunge.
If you don’t know what a Cricut is, it’s basically a bride’s best friend. The Cricut is essentially a cutting machine. It’s so unbelievably smart and can cut, draw, score, and engrave materials such as vinyl, iron-on, card, fabric, and wood. The Explore machine is their middle model, so it can’t do everything, but when weighing up costs, this one was perfect for what I need it for.
I’ve now had the Cricut for about 8 weeks, and I’m pretty confident with it. I’m planning to *finally* do my invites on the Cricut and use the Canon Printer as well. But looking ahead, this machine will enable me to do signage for the wedding, name plates, menus, personalised items… the list goes on! I’ve been playing around with a few designs, but I’m going to keep them to myself.
However, I am very excitingly my Sister’s maid of honour, and we have just been on her hen do in Spain. It was an excellent opportunity to try out the Cricut with a few different things and see how I got on. I did have a fair few testing moments over the last few weeks, but we got there.
I managed to make personalised tote bags, hangover kits, a brat bride t-shirt, door hangers and itineraries. Look out for a tutorial video on TikTok. Once I got the hang of things, I was flying. The totes, kits and t-shirts were made with iron-on vinyl, and I found that a very, very good iron was needed, but the official iron press wasn’t necessary. Most of the designing was done on Canva and then transferred across to the Cricut app.
I wouldn’t say it’s essential to have a printer with the Cricut, but it’s been mega helpful. It’s made it easy to do a print-then-cut, which is what the door hangers were. The design is on the Cricut app and gets sent to print before the Cricut cuts out the shape. Our printer is the Canon Pixma iX6850 A3 Wireless one. I won’t lie, I’ve not got it to work wirelessly yet. I am useless when it comes to these things. I’m really happy with the quality of everything, and I’m excited to print my own invites at home.
I’ll try and share as much as I can about what I’m making without sharing *too* much. I’m so excited about these two new investments, and as I keep telling everyone, ‘the possibilities are endless’. There is so much I can make, and it’s got my creative juices flowing. The one thing I need to get better at is time management. Time is slipping away, and so much to be done!
Stay tuned for the next adventures in my wedding planning journey. Don’t forget you can read all my other Wedding Diaries posts here.
XOXO
