Personalized Birthday Gifts

Personalized Book Bag

I actually started to increase my crafting when my children began attending a lot of birthday parties. I wanted to give gifts that were meaningful, personalized and would help parents out, too. One of the gifts I created was a library book bag. Using the tools and materials I had along with blank tote bags I could pick up from my local craft store, I made tote bags and filled them with books, bookmarks, stickers and sticker books. In this post, I will show you how I made a personalized tote bag.

Personalized bag filled with books, bookmark and card....perfect for a special birthday kid.

Materials Needed...

The Cricut is an all purpose crafting tool. There are many versions of this machine and I have had a few of them. The newest model is the Cricut Maker which boasts a lot of pressure which allows it to cut through a lot of materials as well as a rotary blade which helps to cut fabric and other typically difficult materials. I own a Cricut Air which completely fits my needs and I use it for a lot of the personalized gifts I make. I have a blog post where I made personalized nylon favor bags as a birthday favor. My favorite thing to do is use the Cricut Air and Cricut Design Space to build my design and plan out what it would look like. To access images and fonts, you can buy a subscription, purchase each image individually or buy a cartridge. Other materials include: the tote bag which I purchased from Michaels, iron on vinyl which I buy from Cricut and an iron. If you decide to continue to make personalized iron on and vinyl first, I would recommend buying the Cricut Tool set because it includes: a weeder tool and a scraper. 

Making the components

In Cricut Design Space, I added the name and found the soccer balls. I measured the bag to figure out the room available for the design. Cricut Design Space is easy to use and there are a ton of tutorials online to help. I find it is intuitive however there are some features that are a bit more advanced, like weld and flatten. Once my design was complete, I prepared a black iron on vinyl 12x12 sheet and adhered it to my Cricut Mat. Then I went through the cut process remembering to mirror the image. Once it was cut out, I weeded the design.

There is a template option on design space that you can use as a backdrop to see where your design will finally fit.

From a piece of Iron-On Vinyl will come the cut out design. The Cricut makes this process very easy to do.

Assembly and delivery

After the images are weeded, then it is time to iron. I get my iron good and hot and set it to the fabric temperature. I use a T-ruler to line up my images on the fabric to make sure they are straight. After placing a pressing cloth on top of the images, I apply pressure and heat with the iron. Cricut sells a product called EasyPress which I have not used and do not do enough of these to justify the cost, but the EasyPress makes easy work out of ironing on images to fabric. When you are using the iron, make sure to use a pressing cloth. I will press for about 30 seconds at a time, move the iron, press for 30 seconds and continue. I have found the images stay adhered to the fabric very well even after a lot of use. 

After weeding, the image is ready to be ironed onto the bag.

Use a ruler to make sure the image and the name are straight and centered on the bag.

To package this as a gift, I made a Personalized BookMark using Washi Tape and included a few favorite books and a personalized birthday card.  The feedback I get from parents and birthday boys and girls have been positive and I like giving kids something that only they can have because it is personalized to their tastes. Let me know in the comments if you give gifts like this and if you have any iron on vinyl tips. Happy crafting!

If you are interested in trying this project, I have included a list of materials I have used. These include affiliate links which if you choose to use, I may receive a small commission at no cost to you which goes to running this website. Thank you for your support.

Cricut Access Fonts