Mini Stickers

Hi Friends!  Sorry I missed you yesterday.  Right about the time I usually blog I was scrubbing my floors.

Which is not as fun as blogging.

BUT REALLY, REALLY NEEDED TO BE DONE.

However, the house is all clean and sparkly now, and I feel awesome.  There’s nothing like a clean house to make you feel good.

Except for maybe CROSSING “clean the house” OFF OF THE LIST.

Just sayin’.

Anyways, now I can share another fun, easy project with you!  YAY!

♥

Prepare yourself.

The two biggest kids both got smart phones for Christmas.

Are you shocked?  So am I.  But don’t worry, they don’t even know that they’re smart phones.

Because they will NEVER, EVER, EVER {EVER} BE USED AS PHONES.

EVER.

Here’s the sitch:

They both wanted mp3 players for Christmas.  But we just weren’t sure that we wanted to dish out big bucks for a name brand music player for a 6 and 7 year old.

Well, lo and behold, on Thanksgiving night at Midnight there was an AWESOME deal.  $38 for these pay as you go phones. Joe said he could set them up for what they would need, {they run Android, if you’re interested} and we just wouldn’t activate the service. {EVER.}

So far they’ve worked out great.  They’re powerful enough to do what the kids want {music, Angry Birds}, but nothing we don’t.  And they’re pretty kid tough, surprisingly.  They’re even waterproof to 3 feet, so if there were to be a bathtub incident we should be ok.

The problem came in when we tried to figure out whose was whose.

I mean, JR wouldn’t be caught dead playing some of the music the Helen absolutely loves.  {Ahem, Taylor Swift, ahem.}

So I made some fun vinyl stickers to make it easier.  You could just as easily do this for any type of item you want to I.D. as yours.  Your phone, notebooks, folders…

Here’s how you do it:

First I went into my Silhouette software and picked out a design I thought they would like.  I measured the mp3 player to know how much space I had to work with. I ended up with an owl for Helen and a superhero emblem for J.R.

Then I sent it to my Silhouette, making sure to reset for vinyl.  The cutting tool uses different settings for different media.  You could certainly cut your vinyl with a craft knife or scissors, although this size might be a little trickier to do. I just used a scrap of vinyl left from another project. The Silhouette will cut through just the vinyl, leaving the backing paper intact, just like a sticker.

After the cut was complete I “weeded” the image, which means remove the excess vinyl from the design.  The owl was pretty detailed and some of the little pieces were tricky.  I ended up using a needle to get at some of it, like around the eyes.

Next, I used a piece of transfer tape to pick up the design from the backing paper to keep it’s position. You could certainly live without this, but it makes it so much easier, it’s completely worth it. 

Once the image has been transferred to the tape, you just press it onto the mp3 player.  Then rub gently with a wooden craft stick or spoon to press the vinyl on.

Then peel off the transfer tape and look at your cute design!

I also put a little something on the front of the player to cover up the brand name, since it’s a phone company, and we don’t want anyone to know.

Except I just told all of you.

Huh.

Well, we don’t want the KIDS to know. 

{Ugh. Disregard the fingerprints!}

Here’s how J.R.’s turned out.  He has a lightening bolt on the front.

And both together:

It’s pretty easy to tell who has Taylor Swift’s music now.

{Thank goodness, because JR has major issues with one of her songs.  Something about the kindergarten girls singing it all the time?  It’s pretty funny, actually.}

The kids have started calling them their “Mini’s.”  So that’s what we’re going with.

{Hence the name Mini Stickers}

Well, I’m off to do some fun sewing, but I’ll be back with more cute stuff to share tomorrow. 

Thanks for stopping by!

♥