Camping Projects with a Cricut
Have you ever made Cricut projects for your camping trips in the summer? I did this year for the first time and really enjoyed it. I made a personalized hanging banner for our campsite with Cricut Iron-on and then a S'mores bucket to hold all our s'more ingredients. It was so much fun to use them at our campsite for the first time.
Personalized Hanging Banner
Materials:
Fabric for banner
Everyday Iron-On Vinyl
Glitter Iron-On Vinyl
Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore machine
Cricut EasyPress
Scraper tool
Weeder tool
Transfer tape
Camping SVG or Original Design
Garden Flag Pole Stand
I love those fabric or wooden signs I have seen displayed at campsites with the campers' names on them and thought it would be great to make one for us. I bought some outdoor fabric to apply iron-on vinyl to and a garden flag pole stand to hang it from.
The design I used was part of an SVG camping bundle I purchased online. 
I varied the colors of some items in the design to make it more interesting and also used black mesh iron-on instead of plain black.
To start out, I cut the entire design out of the black mesh iron-on and removed the parts that would be colored, using the outline of those parts to place in the other colored pieces. Then I would only have to iron the design on once.
Here is the completed design all in black for the initial cut.
And here are the design elements in Design Space that I chose to cut out of different colors to replace the black with.
Below are some of the colored pieces all cut out and weeded and ready to be applied to the design.
See below for an image of the carrier sheet that shows an outline of the camper from the design. I placed the blue glitter iron-on, with its carrier sheet, right over the outline, matching all the edges (sticky-side up, of course).
For the pieces that I replaced, I did have to trim a bit of the carrier sheet around them to make sure I did not overlap or cover any of the other design elements.
Unfortunately, this project did not turn our perfectly the first time. I discovered that the fabric I purchased had a protective coating on it, so the iron-on would not stick to it fully. I did take time to iron on some small pieces to fabric scraps beforehand, and that seemed to work okay, so I proceeded with the project.
However, it was not a success. Some parts of the fabric kind of shrunk from the heat, and some of the vinyl just did not adhere to it. You can see how that turned out below.
These results were very disappointing. Luckily, I had purchased two different fabrics, so I moved on to Plan B and started over. Yes, I had to recut all the iron-on pieces and weed them. What a pain. Did I say I enjoyed this project? I must have forgotten this part. Please don't try this at home.
I cut another piece of outdoor fabric, this time a light blue one, and then cut a piece of plain gray cotton fabric to iron the design onto, which worked beautifully. Here it is all ironed on.
I cut the fabric around the design to look like an offset, hoping the end result would look more intentional. I pinned it to the blue outdoor fabric and then sewed around the edges using a zigzag stitch. Next, I sewed the edges and bottom of the blue fabric and sewed a line near the top for a casing, as I had cut the fabric to fold it in half for this purpose.
It did turn our pretty cute, but I was a bit disappointed that my original plan didn't work out. Most banners like this are brown or tan, but there is nothing wrong with being different, right?
At some point, I may add a different design to the other side of this banner. Then it would be like having two separate banners that I could switch out.
I slid the banner over the bar on the stand, and it fit perfectly. Here is a picture of the completed banner at our group campsite on Memorial Day weekend.
In the end, I could call this a successful project, and we will be able to use it for a long time. It even got rained on over the weekend and still looked great.
S'more Fun Bucket
Materials:
Metal bucket with compartments
Permanent adhesive vinyl
Cricut machine (I used a Joy)
Standard Grip cutting mat
Weeder tool
Scraper tool
Transfer tape
Painters tape
Like happens with so many of my projects, I bought the bucket for this one without a clear plan of what I would make with it. I saw it at a thrift store and loved the color. I assumed it was probably meant to hold utensils and napkins, but I figured I could do something else with it, if I wanted to.
When I saw some s'more ingredient holders on Pinterest, I knew this would be a perfect project for my bucket. Mine has ribbed edges along most of it, so I decided to apply a design only to the top part that was flat instead of to the entire side.
The bucket had compartments in just the right sizes for the graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows.
For my design, I decided to put text on the front that said, "S'more Fun." I chose a font called BFC Daisy Soft because I thought it looked puffy like marshmallows and, of course, I used white vinyl for the text.
I found a few camping images in Design Space to put on the back side of my bucket. I cut my design elements with my Joy machine since all of the pieces were fairly small, but this could be done with any Cricut.
The campfire image had two colors, so I separated the layers into brown and yellow and cut them out individually.
Then I adhered the flame part to the brown image right over the top of it, so I could use transfer tape to apply the entire design to the bucket at once.
I used painters tape on the bucket to mark the edges, so I could center the text between the two pieces and keep things even.
Once my bucket was done, I loaded it with our s'more ingredients and packed it for camping. It was so much fun to bring it out at the campsite and surprise everyone.
And here it is from the back.
I think my grandchildren were impressed. Everything is all about them, anyway. Well, pretty much.
My next camping project will be one of those big bucket lights made from a 5-gallon bucket. I have everything I need for it, including the light. Hopefully, I will get it done in time to use it this summer yet. Do you have any camping projects you still want to get done this year?
Leslie
I only buy craft supplies when I need it for a project. Or because it's on sale. Or I have a coupon I need to use. Or because it's pretty. Or because I want it.
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