How To Make Personalized Stuffed Dolls With The Cricut EasyPress Mini

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

Make your own personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the new Cricut EasyPress Mini! Perfect for small or odd-shaped projects like hats, shoes, shirt sleeves, cuffs, pockets, and stuffed animals!


I’ve been blogging about Cricut for so long that sometimes they send me fun new tools to try out; when their newest EasyPress Mini showed up on my doorstep a few weeks ago I couldn’t WAIT to try it out! I love doing projects with heat transfer vinyl, but the full sized EasyPress or a regular heat press can be too big and cumbersome for some of the more delicate or detailed projects I want to do. But not anymore! The EasyPress Mini is the perfect addition to my full-sized EasyPress because now I can do small or oddly-shaped projects like hats, shoes, and stuffed animals just as easily as I can do large projects like shirts or tote bags!

Today I’m going to show you how to easily make your own personalized stuffed dolls with the EasyPress Mini in just a few minutes! I made these for my girls for their birthdays in a few weeks, but personalized stuffed animals or dolls like this would make great baby shower gifts too!

Make your own personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the cricut easypress mini

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Personalized Stuffed Dolls With The Cricut EasyPress Mini

Using heat transfer vinyl is really simple and easy to do (even more so now that you can reach tight spots or hard-to-reach areas with the EasyPress Mini!) But if it’s your first time using iron-on vinyl I suggest you check out my detailed post about using heat transfer vinyl here before you start this project.

  • Time spent doing stuff: 10 minutes
  • Time spent watching your Cricut cut: 5 minutes
  • Total project time: 15 minutes

Materials

Tools & Equipment

Materials needed for making personalized stuffed dolls with a cricut easypress mini

Instructions

Start by designing your project in Cricut Design Space. You can search the image library for pre-made monograms, or you can follow these steps to upload your own image to Design Space.

When you’re ready to send your design to your Cricut machine for cutting, be sure to set the material to Iron-On and turn on the Mirror toggle to mirror your design before cutting.

Load your heat transfer vinyl onto the StandardGrip mat with the clear liner side facing down, then load the mat into your Cricut.

Load heat transfer vinyl into the cricut for cutting before pressing onto stuffed doll with cricut easypress mini

After your machine is finished cutting out your design, unload the mat from the machine and carefully remove the heat transfer vinyl from the mat.

Trim away any unused portions of heat transfer vinyl and save them for another project. Then weed away the background pieces of vinyl using a weeder tool; don’t forget to weed out the center of letters like “a” and “o”!

Weed away background vinyl before pressing with cricut easypress mini

You can plug in your Cricut EasyPress Mini and start it pre-heating while your machine cuts or you can do it right before you’re ready to press; it heats up really quickly so it’s not a problem if you forget to do it earlier! The EasyPress Mini has one button on it to control the power and temperature of the press: press it once to turn it on to the lowest setting, press it again to change to medium heat, press a third time to set it to high heat, and press a fourth time to turn it off.

You can see what setting you’re on by the three wavy lines under the button. The button and lines are red when the press is heating and they turn green once the correct temperature is reached.

Change temperature settings on the cricut easypress mini with the press of a button

The great thing about the Cricut EasyPress Mini is that is has the same power, benefits, and technology as the EasyPress 2, but just in a smaller, more convenient package! It has even heat across the whole plate so you don’t have to worry about the edges of your project, and it is totally compatible with the new Infusible Ink products, which means it can get all the way up to 400 degrees F!

But for this project, since these dolls are made of polyester, I used the lowest heat setting.

When your EasyPress Mini is pre-heated, position your weeded design face down on your project, then press firmly with the EasyPress Mini for about 30 seconds.

Use the cricut easypress mini to press small or odd shaped areas like stuffed animals or dolls

If you design is larger than the EasyPress Mini plate, you can move the press to a new spot and press again to get the whole design permanently attached.

Once all parts of your design have been pressed, set the EasyPress Mini back in its base. Wait a minute for the project to cool slightly, then carefully peel off the clear plastic liner, leaving the heat transfer vinyl on your project.

And you’re done!

How to make personalized stuff dolls or animals with a cricut easypress mini

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How to make personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the cricut easypress mini

Below is a printable version of this project; click the large “Print” button to print out the instructions. (It defaults to just printing the text in the instructions, no photos, to save you paper and printer ink!)

If you like this project, leave a review by clicking the stars or by clicking the Review button! That way I know which types of projects you guys like and which I should do more of!

How to make personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the cricut easypress mini

How To Make Personalized Stuffed Dolls With The Cricut EasyPress Mini

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Make your own personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the new Cricut EasyPress Mini! Perfect for small or odd-shaped projects like hats, shoes, shirt sleeves, cuffs, pockets, and stuffed animals!
Active Time 10 minutes
Cricut Cutting Time 5 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Cost $5

Instructions
 

  • Start by designing your project in Cricut Design Space: search the image library for pre-made monograms, or upload your own image to Design Space.
  • Click the green Make It button to send the project to your Cricut machine.
  • Turn on the Mirror toggle for all mats.
  • Set the material to Iron-On.
  • Place the heat transfer vinyl onto the StandardGrip mat, clear plastic liner side down. Then load the mat into your Cricut.
  • Press the flashing Go button to begin the cut.
  • Unload the mat from the machine and carefully remove the heat transfer vinyl from the mat.
  • Trim away any unused portion of heat transfer vinyl.
  • Weed away the background pieces of vinyl using a weeder tool.
  • Plug in the Cricut EasyPress Mini and set the temperature. (I set it to the lowest setting for these polyester dolls.)
  • Place your weeded design face down on your project and press with the EasyPress Mini for 30 seconds.
  • Once your project is cool, carefully remove the clear plastic liner, leaving the heat transfer vinyl on your project.

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How to personalized stuffed animals or dolls with the cricut easypress mini

Disclosure: I received compensation from Cricut in exchange for my participation in this campaign, and my honest discussion of their products. But the Cricut Maker and, really, all Cricut products are seriously amazing and all opinions in this post are 100% my own. I would never write a post about something I didn’t think was useful or interesting for you guys, and Practically Functional will only publish sponsored posts for companies or products I love and believe in!

Jessi Wohlwend

I believe that anyone can do crafts and DIY projects, regardless of skill or experience. I love sharing simple craft ideas, step by step DIY project tutorials, cleaning hacks, and other tips and tricks all with one goal in mind: giving you the tools you need to “do it yourself”, complete fun projects, and make awesome things!

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