Today I want to share the easiest Mickey Mouse Christmas decorations you will ever make! I am going to do these on some wood slice ornaments that have been really popular in recent years. I will be using patterned iron on/heat transfer vinyl for this project. Yes, you can use HTV on wood. Let me show you how!
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Supplies for Mickey Mouse Christmas Decorations
To make shopping easy, I have included links in my supply list so you can just click and add to cart.
- Cricut cutting machine
- Cricut cutting mat
- Mickey Mouse images (there are several in Design Space)
- Wood slice ornaments
- Heat Press – I have one from Planet Flame
- Red Plaid Heat Transfer Vinyl
- Patterned HTV also needs a mask sheet to transfer it so remember to add that to your cart too!
- I also recommend a squeegee which can help smooth the mask sheet on to the vinyl
Over the years I have gotten 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!
I have also ordered from Expression Vinyl and Heat Transfer Warehouse. All of these stores patterned vinyl, mask sheets and squeegees.
Designing your Mickey Mouse Christmas Decorations
In Cricut Design Space, once you are in the design canvas click on the Images button to the left of the screen. Type Mickey into the search bar and find a few Mickey Mouse images that you like and want to use for your wood slice ornaments.
Since we are going to cut the Mickey Mouse shapes out of a plaid patterned vinyl, we only want the black silhouette shape of Mickey to be cut, so we can delete all of the other layers. To help you determine which layers you will be deleting I marked them with a blue arrow in the image below. You can click on each one directly from the layers panel on the right hand side of the screen and then click the Delete button in the upper right corner of the screen, which I have circled in blue for you.
Make a Template for the Wood Slice Ornament
When I am creating designs to place on an object I like to make my own templates when I can. This helps me to size my images to the object they will be placed on. Since our Mickey images will be going on to round wood slice ornaments I am going to click on the Shapes button on the left side of the screen and insert a circle. I have this indicated in blue for you in the image below.
Next, measure your ornament and make your circle the same size as the ornament. I am going to change the color of my circle to be a light brown just so I can see it better on the screen. Then I can resize the Mickey images down to fit inside of the circle. Now I can see exactly how the Mickey will fit on the ornaments.
Once you have everything sized correctly you can delete those circles. We were just using them as a guide and we do not really want to cut them. Now we are ready to hit Make It and cut our vinyl!
Cutting Patterned Heat Transfer Vinyl
If you have ever worked with heat transfer vinyl in the past, you have probably been told to mirror your image and put the shiny backing side of the vinyl down on the cutting mat. Well, patterned vinyl is the OPPOSITE of that. Solid colored vinyl comes with a clear carrier sheet attached to it, and that is on the back of the vinyl. Since you want to keep that carrier sheet intact, that is why you place that shiny carrier sheet down on the cutting mat. This means you are actually cutting from the back side of your vinyl, which is why you need to mirror your image.
But when it comes to patterned vinyl it is the opposite of that. When you cut patterned heat transfer vinyl you want to place it on your cutting mat with the pattern side up to cut through the vinyl. Also, you do not want to mirror your image. So place the patterned vinyl on the cutting mat, set your material as iron on and cut the Mickey shapes. Next you will weed away the excess vinyl from around the Mickey shapes.
You will notice there is a clear backing sheet to the patterned vinyl I am using. I need to get the Mickey images off of that backing and on to my wood slice ornaments. This is where that masking sheet we purchased will come into play.
Using the Mask Sheet to Move the Design
Take a piece of the clear masking sheet and place it over the top of your plaid Mickey Mouse image so that the sticky side of the masking sheet is touching the plaid of the Mickey design. Next use the squeegee to smooth down the masking sheet.
Once it is all smooth, flip the whole thing over and go over it again with the squeegee. This is to make sure you have a good clean transfer. This is a little bonus tip from me. I have found that when you work with the image flipped over and peel away the backing the image seems to transfer better than if you try to lift up the transfer mask with the image attached. You can see in the image below that I am peeling away the backing sheet. This leaves just my plaid Mickey shape on the transfer mask.
The back of the transfer mask is slightly sticky, so when I place the image down on the wood slice ornaments and smooth it down it will stay in place for me to heat press it onto the ornament.
Heat Pressing on Wood
You do have to be a little more careful when pressing heat transfer vinyl on to wood. You do not want to start a fire!
When I first tried to heat press on wood it did not work too well. This is because I have a clamshell heat press, so I was not able to get the heating element to go flat on top of the wood due to the thickness of the wood slice ornaments. I did figure out a little trick.
While using a hot pad, I held my wood slice up to the top of the heat press so it would be flat against the heating element. Make sure to put a piece of parchment paper on top of your design so that you do not burn it. The hot pad also helps so that you can move the wood slice ornament to a place to cool off before removing the masking sheet.
Do not throw that masking sheet away! You can actually reuse these over and over, which is a great way to save some money on supplies. You will be able to tell when it is time to throw it away when your images will no longer stick to it and transfer nicely. Do not try to apply any additional adhesive to these to make them last longer. This is a very special kind of adhesive that is safe to use with heat.
All that is left now is to add a little string so you can hang your Mickey Mouse Christmas decorations. I think that these wood slice ornaments would look amazing for a rustic looking Christmas tree. You could also make these to give as gifts, or place one at each plate on the dinner table as a small take home gift.
I hope that you enjoyed this post, and that you stop back every day from now until Christmas to see what other Disney Christmas crafts I have planned for you! I am doing 25 Days of Disney Christmas Crafts to inspire you to add more Disney to your life while using your Cricut for crafting. If you want to see the whole line up of crafts you can go HERE.
