DIY Christmas Shirts with Cricut

‘Tis the season to be jolly! These DIY Christmas Shirts are so fun and will make you the star of all your holiday parties. We have a Design Space template for a Santa, Elf, Gingerbread, and Snowman Shirt!

Christmas T-Shirts

If there is one thing I love making with my Cricut the most, it’s custom t-shirts.

I feel like for every occasion and party, I automatically think, “I should make a shirt for that.”

And I usually do – so you can probably imagine the stockpile of iron on vinyl I have in my basement.

As you might guess, I also LOVE my Cricut EasyPress, because it made iron-on projects SO much easier than they were when I was using my old iron. And the possibilities are endless.

I mean, iron-on isn’t just for shirts and bags either – you can use it on wood, canvases, and even on chipboard (like I did with this birthday banner).

So when my friend, Jen, from 100 Directions, invited me to create a fun new iron-on project – along with participating in a super fun EasyPress 2 giveaway…I didn’t have to think twice.

Of course, my mind got a little ahead of me with my idea, and it ended up being quite the undertaking (especially since I just had abdominal surgery – I never realized how much crunching over I do when working with my Cricut), but I absolutely LOVE how everything turned out.

With the holiday season pretty much here, I wanted to make a fun seasonal project that my family could enjoy throughout the holidays. I also wanted to make something that others could easily enjoy and replicate as well.

Forrest suggested making some kind of holiday t-shirt, and I remembered how much I loved an elf shirt he had from some Christmas pajamas I gave him a few years back. As soon as I started thinking about that, I came up with four t-shirt ideas that I LOVED – one for each member of our family.

Before long, I was tinkering around in Design Space trying to find all the right combination of images for the t-shirts. Most of the time when I try to design something, it ends up being really hard…but thanks to all the awesome images I have access to in Design Space, it wasn’t too difficult, and I was able to create just the look I was looking for.

I also was able to find almost all of the vinyl I needed for this project in my basement – I just needed one more roll of white!

Honestly, the hardest part of this project was finding a brown shirt for my son’s gingerbread shirt. We ended up finally finding one at Target, though we had to turn it inside out. If you are making these shirts for little kids, I definitely recommend buying shirts from Primary.com – so many colors, and they have brown!

Anyways, there was a lot of switching of mats and colors, but luckily, my Cricut does most of the work 🙂

The application process was a bit time consuming as well, but my EasyPress 2 machines made it a little bit easier. I actually ended up using all three sizes. The largest size was heaven-sent for some of the larger pieces of vinyl.

Jack really enjoyed being able to use the little one. It’s the perfect size for him!

Now, here is everything you need to know about making these shirts. There’s a lot of information (but there are four different designs), but I hope it will be helpful. I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible to replicate these designs. Please let me know if you have any questions!

Materials

For Santa

Red t-shirt

White iron-on vinyl

Yellow iron-on vinyl

Black iron-on vinyl 

For Elf

Green t-shirt

Red glitter iron-on (or regular is fine, too)

Yellow iron-on 

For Gingerbread Man

Brown t-shirt – long sleeved is best

Red glitter iron-on 

Green glitter iron-on

White iron-on 

For Snowman 

White t-shirt

Orange iron-on (we used glitter)

Black iron-on

Materials for all

Multiple StandardGrip mats (Cricut.com/Amazon)

Fine point blade (Cricut.com/Amazon)

Weeding Tool (Cricut.com/Amazon)

EasyPress 2 (optional but helpful – otherwise you will need an iron or heat press) (Cricut.com/Amazon)

EasyPress mat (Cricut.com/Amazon)

BrightPad (optional but helpful) (Cricut.com/Amazon)

**Don’t forget to use the code CLARKS10 for 10% off and free shipping on supplies and materials on Cricut.com**

Tutorials for Techniques in this Project

• How to Use Iron-on Vinyl
• How to Layer Iron-on Vinyl 

Notes for this Project

–Here are the Design Space files:

• Santa
• Elf
• Gingerbread Man
• Snowman

There is one paid element that is 99 cents – and if you don’t have Cricut Access, you may have to pay for some of the other designs.

These have all been sized specifically for the t-shirt sizes I was using:

• Santa – adult large
• Elf – adult medium
• Snowman – 2T/3T
• Gingerbread man – youth 6 (probably similar to a youth small)

You will need to resize the elements depending on what size and brand of shirts you are using. I would make sure to measure carefully so you don’t have to recut! You can ungroup the elements in Design Space for each design to resize them individually if you need to.

–We got most of our shirts at Michaels, and they are Gildan brand. However, as I mentioned above, it was really hard to find a plain brown t-shirt in store (we checked at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, Target, and Walmart). If you are making this for a child, I would highly recommend ordering it from Primary.com

–I used multiple kinds of iron-on vinyl. The SportFlex iron-on is definitely my favorite for t-shirts, but it’s only available in a limited number of colors. I love their glitter iron-on, and I feel like it has a nice pop. I really struggle to find yellow iron-on anywhere – in store or on Cricut.com. I was able to order it from Amazon. I also really like Expressions Vinyl for iron-on – they have tons of colors and are great quality.

Directions

The instructions for all of these are pretty straightforward – cut out the vinyl in the colors you need.

For a couple of these designs, you will need to use a layering technique, which I referenced above. Make sure you put glitter as the top layer – not the bottom!

Other Posts You May Enjoy

• 50+ Cricut Christmas Projects: Easy and Jolly Ideas!
• 10 Easy Cricut Maker Projects (Using Less than Five Materials!)