Weather you are in a classroom or doing school from home, back to school can be fun with you add a little Disney to your classroom. This Disney classroom calendar was easy to make with my Cricut. This tutorial will show you just how I did it.
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Supplies (with links to make shopping easy!)
- Cricut machine
- Black cardstock
- White Cardstock
- White permanent vinyl (see links at the end to purchase)
- Clear contact paper
- Weeding tool
- Cricut black pen (use the links below to purchase)
Let’s get started!
First, I cut all of the numbers 1 through 31 on my Cricut from white permanent vinyl. The font I used can be found in Cricut Design Space. It is called Plantin Schoolbook. I decided to cut the letters from vinyl so that I could easily transfer the numbers on to the Mickey Mouse heads that would be the days of the month. The permanent vinyl is already sticky on the back so that saves me from having to glue the numbers down.
After I cut all of the numbers I started weeding away the excess vinyl. I like to weed at an angle for the large outside piece of vinyl. I feel like this helps me to watch the numbers to make sure that they are not coming up from the backing sheet. If you see any part starting to come off the backing, just use the weeding tool to kind of poke it back down to the backing sheet.
Next I weed out the inside pieces for the numbers. Use your weeding tool to remove the centers from numbers like 4, 6, 8, 9 and 0.
Next I cut 31 Mickey Mouse heads from black cardstock. These Mickey heads are also found in Cricut Design Space. There will be one for each day of the month. I cut a small piece of clear contact paper that I will use to transfer the numbers from the backing sheet over to the Mickey Mouse heads.
First remove the paper backing from the clear contact paper. Next, place the clear contact paper over the numbers you want to transfer to the Mickey Mouse head. I normally rub my finger over the top of the contact paper to make sure it really sticks down to the vinyl.
Flip it over
You read that right. Flip the piece of vinyl over and peel the backing away from the contact paper. This helps the vinyl letters to stick to the contact paper and peel away from the backing easier. While you are peeling the vinyl backing away, if any part of the vinyl letters try to stay stuck to the backing, just use your weeding tool to separate them a little so the numbers stick to the contact paper.
After you are done with this step, you should have a number on the clear contact paper like the image below.
Now you can easily center those numbers on top of your Mickey Mouse cardstock piece. Rub your finger over the top of the letters to make sure that the vinyl is stuck down nice and smooth.
Now start to peel the clear contact paper off. Since the contact paper is not as sticky as the vinyl is, it peels off nicely. Additionally, it does not mess up your cardstock.
Save that piece of clear contact paper. You can use it when you repeat this whole process for the rest of the numbers. Continue with this until you have all 31 of them completed.
Disney Classroom Calendar Days of the Week
Next, let’s make the days of the week squares to go at the top of our Disney classroom calendar. For these I made a black square in Design Space that was 3 1/4″ big. Measure your finished calendar space to determine the exact size you will need. Next I made a 3″ white square. After I cut these out, I will glue the white cardstock on top of the black.
I want to make three Mickey Mouse heads on the top of the white square. I could have just cut small Mickey Mouse heads to glue on top of the white cardstock, but I wanted show you how you can slice to achieve this look. First, I inserted a Mickey Mouse head and made it about 3/4″ in height.
Next, I right click on the Mickey Mouse head and click Duplicate. I do this twice so that I have a total of three Mickey Mouse heads.
I am going to move the Mickey Mouse heads above the white square to work on aligning them. This will allow me to use the white square as a spacing guide. Don’t worry right now about if you have them straight or not. I will show you how to let the Cricut do that for you.
Using Align and Distribute
I love using Align in Cricut Design Space. This little tool will help you to make sure that everything is lined up perfectly! It is perfect for this next step. Select all three of the Mickey Mouse heads and go to the Align button on the top of the screen. You will see several different options. I am going to choose Align Top. As soon as you select Align Top you will see the three Mickey Mouse heads snap in line, with all of the tops at the same height.
The next thing I want to do is make sure that the Mickey Mouse heads are evenly spaced out. The first two are a lot closer to each other than the third one is. Let’s use Align again, but this time go down further in the choices and you will see a section call Distribute. Make sure to have all three Mickey Mouse heads selected and then pick the Distribute Horizontally and see what happens.
The Mickey’s shifted so that they are now evenly spaced out! I love this tool! Now I don’t have to try and make things line up or figure out how far apart to make things. Design Space will do the thinking for me.
Now let’s weld
Now that we have the Mickey Mouse heads all lined up and spaced evenly, I am going to select all of them and click on the Weld button in the lower right corner. Weld is typically used when you want to join two or more things together that are touching. This is great to use when you are using a script font so that the Cricut will cut out a full word instead of separate letters. So why am I using weld here instead of group? Because I want all three of these Mickey Mouse heads to act like one shape so that I can slice all three of them from the square at the same time.
The Slice tool in Cricut Design Space only works when you have two things selected. If I had not used Weld in the step before, I would have had to Slice those three Mickey Mouse heads one at a time from the white square. Since I welded them first, Cricut Design Space now sees them as one image. This allows me to select the white square AND the three Mickey Mouse heads all at the same time, and then click the Slice button in the lower right corner of the screen. I love this little trick!
After I slice, I move the white square over the top of the black square. You can delete all of the extra Mickey Mouse heads that are there from when you sliced. In the image below you can see how you can see the black square through the Mickey Mouse shaped holes in the white square.
Add the writing
The next step is to add the writing for the days of the week. I just recently did a very detailed post about using pens to write with your Cricut. Instead of repeating all of that information here, I am going to send you over to that blog post to read the steps for adding words and writing with Cricut pens.
The most important thing to remember when you want to write with the Cricut pens is to choose a writing style font. If you are not sure how to do that, I did a whole post just about choosing a writing style font that you can read HERE. The font that I used for this project is Cricut Sans, and it can be found in Cricut Design Space.
I hope this tutorial inspired you to create your own Disney classroom calendar. No matter what school looks like, it is fun when we can sprinkle a little Disney magic in there!
Check out all of my Disney Classroom project through the links below
Disney Classroom Calendar
Mickey’s Helping Hands Board
Disney Classroom Birthday Board
I prefer to use Siser brand vinyl for my iron on projects. I feel that is the best quality brand of iron on vinyl out there, and it weeds the easiest. For permanent vinyl I like StarCraft vinyl.
Over the years I have gotten Siser vinyl from a variety of places, including My Craft Source. When you shop at My Craft Source be sure to use code ShawnMosch to get 5% off your order!
Another retailer that I work with is Vinyl and Tulle. Use coupon code SHAWNMOSCH to save 10% off your order! They ship WORLD WIDE!
Madame Blanks is my recommended source for for my Canadian followers! Use coupon code SHAWN10 to save 10% off your order of StarCraft products!
I love that I can order large rolls or small sheets when ordering Siser online. This can give you a larger variety of choices and allow to to save money on larger orders. To make sure you are getting the best price for your vinyl, make sure to check out my Vinyl Buyers Guide.
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