 Hi you guys, it's Lindsay and welcome back to my channel inside the Hymn. Today we have some really interesting staging going on. You might be asking yourself, what are we doing in your bedroom? And I'll get to that. Your second question might be, why are you in a bathing suit with a pool tote and sunglasses in your bedroom? So for those of you that don't know, I moved two days ago and during the move, I you know, obviously had to pack up all my sewing stuff and everything else. All while that was going on, the lovely people at Cricut reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to participate in their Sew With Cricut vlog tour. And of course, yes, absolutely. I would love to do that. Little did I know that it was going to come to this, where I was literally walking out the door with my adorable tote bag and I look outside and I notice, okay, it's drizzling. No big deal. There's a covered area of the pool. So I pull up my weather app, intense thunderstorms, hail, blinding rain, all of that coming our way, coming straight for us. So you might see in the window behind me it get darker and darker and darker as time goes. So basically I had to cancel my cute little photo shoot that I had scheduled out by the pool and we're gonna do it in the apartment, but couldn't just do it anywhere in the apartment. My filming studio area that I have been working on has some other special projects going on that I can't allow you to see. And my living room is basically boxes. So this was the cutest, most organized area of my apartment right now. So I figured what the hey, let's just give this a go. I think that you're going to love the tote bag anyways and this adorable little drink cup that I made. So just try and pretend that there is cool blue water and a bright sun and maybe a huge umbrella and it looks lovely and peaceful and relaxing like we're not in my bedroom, but we are and I'm in a bathing suit. I didn't even bother changing. I'm like, you know what? I got like this outfit together for this. I'm just gonna keep wearing it. What the hey, the weather isn't gonna bring me down. Okay, so with all of that in mind, let me tell you about these awesome projects that I made with my new Cricut machine. So here is my adorable new pool tote. I just absolutely adore it. I mean, you can't go wrong with pink and gold and flamingos, right? I mean how can that not be cute? So yeah, I made this pattern from M7611. I want to say it's a newer accessories pattern. I mean, I just got it. Yeah, copyright 2017. So this is a newer pattern of theirs. I made version A, which is the smaller of the tote bags, but I think these are adorable too and I will definitely try to make those. But this is the version that I made here. I did opt instead of for the fabric handles. I just took some cording that you can get at any craft store and used that with metal grommets. So you can see the metal grommets here. I mean, hindsight, I probably would have put these a little bit higher, but I was trying to use the markings from the pattern and didn't quite work out. But hey, who cares? Not me. You know, making a bag is no big deal. I think that so long as you have some really great interfacing, your tote bag is going to turn out cute no matter what. But elevating that to another level, to a level where people go, hey, where did you get that bag? I think that that is where Cricut comes into play because you can come up with whatever is in your mind, whether it be a quote, whether it be your monogram, whether it be an image of something. Literally, whatever it is, the Cricut can cut that out onto this iron-on vinyl and you can add it to your projects. And it just makes them personalized. It makes them definitely unique. And I think it just makes them really, really special. But I chose an adorable little quote. Poolside is my paradise and I used Cricut's iron-on vinyl. The fabric, again, is from Joanne's like home decor section. I just got this hot paint color and then found the flamingos, which are adorable. And then the inside is just lined with like a navy, like it's like a, it's a maybe a vinyl-backed cotton. So it's still waterproof and sandproof as much as it can be anyways. I thought it was important that if it was going to be like around water that, you know, it resists as much moisture as possible. And then I also made this adorable little drink cup. It says, it has a little flamingo on it and it says, tall drink of water, which I thought was cute because you need water. You need to hydrate by the pool. So I just got this little cup off of Amazon and basically just screw, there's like a screw for the lid and then there's a screw for the base and it's just double walled. And so you're allowed, you can put paper, you can put fabric, you can put whatever you want in there. So I stuck in my adorable little new design, which I just love. So working with the Cricut machine is actually super, super simple. I was sort of intimidated whenever I first got it because I had never used anything like that before. And I don't know, it was just like very foreign territory, but I had an awesome time in their design space, like designing these things. These are all original, lensy designs. I actually have made them downloadable for you. So all you do is download the file, import it into your Cricut's design space, and then you can print out this exact same design. But I had a lot of fun with that. I think it kind of spoke to, you know, a part of my creativity. I wouldn't call myself a graphic designer by any stretch of the word, but I do find this stuff fun and interesting. So I enjoyed that. If you don't, there are tons of designs that you can purchase off of Etsy and import or, you know, you can follow other bloggers and import theirs. But Cricut really does a really good job of making so many, I mean, there's like thousands of images, tons and tons and tons of different fonts and everything that you can play with. So they do make it pretty easy for anybody to do it, but if you're not into that, that's okay. You can just purchase them or download them for free somewhere and then import them in and you're off to the races. And so once I kind of got the hang of it, I was like, this is a little bit addicting, which is why I ended up with two projects instead of just one, because I just wanted to keep playing with it. I just wanted to keep trying new things. So while I was making the tote, I took a couple of notes. I filmed some of the instructions on how to work the machine and everything like that. So I am going to cut to myself from last night, explaining how to cut out and apply the vinyl. Take away Lindsay from 24 hours ago. So here she is. Beautiful machine. I mean, so many great little details. The color of it, it's kind of hard to see, but it's mint green. And then there's like all these really pretty silver accents. They did such a good job. Silver, white, mint green, it's kind of like a nod to the fifties or something. I don't know. I just love it. So pretty. Okay, so right whenever you open the box, you get this little packet of like your warranty and like other websites and a little booklet and all that jazz. And to get started, you go to cricket.com slash setup. And honestly, it couldn't be easier. You just click through all the steps and then click the continue button and it walks you through everything. I mean, anybody could figure this out. All right, you guys, we are ready to cut. I've got my beautiful matte gold vinyl onto the mat. And you can see the mat is like sticky. So that's how it sticks to it. And yeah, the mat is loaded and we are ready to go. Okay. All done. I don't know. Can you guys see? So now we'll peel all that away. Okay, so I have pulled away all of the like background and you'll see there are all these little areas where you have to remove like the inner part. So you get this little tool called a weeder and you use it to pull up all those negative space areas like so. So I'm going to do that for all these little areas all over. And then I'll be ready to iron. So there are all my little weed scraps. And here is the design. And obviously you print it backwards so that whenever you iron it on, it's the right way because you're going to, you know, press this side down. So the design side down. So then it'll be right side up. Anyways, there's my design. Super easy. Weeding is a lot of fun. I think it's very therapeutic. The more intricate, the better, in my opinion. Go crazy. So at this point, you basically have an iron on decal where one side is like shiny and nothing's on it. And then the other side is sticky and where the where the vinyl is placed on it. So this is my fabric where I'm going to place the image. And basically I'm going to center it and make it beautiful and put it somewhere like that and apply the iron to the plasticky side of the iron on. So a couple tips for getting this centered or at least as centered as you can. I took my clear ruler and I lined up the edge of the fabric, which I know is straight to the edge of this clear backing, which I also know is straight and put it at about two and one eighths. And then down here, I did just about the same thing. Just made sure that the bottom of the P was within that two and one eighths. It's not exact, but it's close enough and no one's going to notice. And then also you can barely see, but I gently folded back this clear plastic and put a little notch slit into the plastic where the center was so that I could line it up with my center notch that's here on my pattern. So just a couple things to help guide you. Again, it's probably not exactly down to the millimeter perfect, but I think from afar, it will be just fine. Also be mindful of your seam allowances. So if you're making something like, let's say you're making, I don't know, like shorts or something and you have a waistband. I don't know why you would put a decal on the front of shorts, but hey, to each his own. Anyways, just to illustrate my point, and you had to like fold this over, you would want to make sure that you centered your decal in the center after all the seam allowances are taking into account. So all of mine are the same. They're all half an inch. So I don't have to worry about that, but just something else to keep in mind as you're getting ready to iron this onto your fabric, there's kind of no turning back at this point. So make sure it's exactly how you want it. Tada. There you go. It's all on there. Isn't it beautiful? I love it against this pink background. So from here on out, you just sew your pattern per the pattern instructions. So you can see it's pretty easy. You just, you know, load up the mat and press a couple buttons and away it goes. It's very magical. It's very, like it puts you in a trance kind of watching it. I had to convince myself for the second one to just walk away and let it do its thing. Otherwise, I was sitting there like mesmerized by it. And then, like I said, the part about waiting everything out was really kind of therapeutic and a lot of fun. And I really quite enjoyed that part. Maybe tedious to some people, but I really didn't mind it at all. The application process, like to get this onto the fabric, wasn't bad at all. I will say though that this umbrella fabric does melt. It does not take to heat well at all. But so I had to use like a pressing cloth. I'm sorry if the thunder is drowning out my voice. This is just a comedy of errors. My pool bag in a thunderstorm. Anyways, so I did have to use a pressing cloth and I couldn't put it on the highest heat setting of my iron, like the instructions say, because it would melt. So I really just had to take longer. I had to press it down firmly for a shorter amount of time, multiple times. So normally they say, your highest heat setting on your iron, 20 to 25 seconds, lift and then repeat. I ended up doing like 10 to 15 seconds lifting and repeating and then going over the design again. And then taking the tip of my iron and pointing it at someone that like as you start to peel back the plastic, you can see the parts that aren't quite adhered. And so you just, it's very forgiving, very, very forgiving. You just place the plastic back over top, take the tip of your iron and rub vigorously over that spot until everything adheres. So probably a trickier fabric than just like a t-shirt or a regular quilting cotton or something like that. But I didn't know. I didn't know. So, and it's totally Lindsay fashion for me to just make things more difficult than they need to be, right? So the instructions for how to do everything prior to using the machine are just as simple. I'm going to have detailed step by step DIY instructions on the blog version of this video. So for every video I post in case you didn't know, I also posted on my blog at insidethehem.com. So go there and you'll have instructions. I just like instructions written. Personally, I don't like watching how to videos. I like to skim through the instructions and get to the place I need really easily. So that's what I'm going to do for you guys. But all the design instructions and how to prepare your design for cutting will all be there. And then the ironing of the vinyl that will be on the instructions for ironing the vinyl will be on the blog as well. So be sure to go check that out. So now that I have convinced you that you need your own Cricut machine, how about winning one? Doesn't that sound awesome? Through this whole sewing with Cricut's blogger kickoff tour, they are giving away a machine. So there's going to be a link in the description box. Here's how you access the description box for those of you that are new to my channel. It can be a little tricky depending on which device you're watching on. Either way, I got you covered. Find the description box and go there. There is a link to where you can go to enter the giveaway. There's also a coupon code. Cricut is doing free shipping with the coupon code Christmas in July. So make sure that if you go there to purchase a machine to use that to get free shipping. They also have some other sales and things going on. So kind of poke around there and see what tickles your fancy. What else? Oh, I also have links to everyone else as we're dissipating in this blogger tour. So if you liked what I saw or if you liked what I made and you want to see what other people made, please go check it out. We have a little private Facebook group where people have been sharing their stuff as they've made it and there's some adorable, adorable things. Lots of really great makers participating in this. So I'm humbled and blessed to be among them. I really appreciate you guys sticking with me on this one. My pool tote slash water cup in a thunderstorm knot of the pool vlog. I think it should be the title. No, I'm not going to title it that, but you got to do what you got to do, right? Such as life. So thanks for sticking around, enjoying the scenery pool or otherwise. It's a really cute bag and a really cute cup, period. So thanks so much for watching and I will see you guys next time. Bye.