A simple and festive gift for the father (or father figure) that’s impossible to buy for.
Does anyone else find it difficult to come up with a unique and fun gift idea for Father’s Day? As you can imagine, I like to make things myself but it’s hard to find something that’s just the right balance of practical and not cliche. Last week I had the idea of a little cocktail kit that can be taken on an adventure, and be a treat at the end of a long day. Naturally my Cricut helped me to turn this from basic into something elegant!
Contents of the Cocktail Kit
The fun thing about this present is that you can really put whatever you want in it, to match the tastes of whoever you’re giving it to. I wanted something that could make a few different cocktails, so I worked around that general idea. I think the trick is to create some cohesive letterings and symbols on the Cricut Design Space app and use them across the items in your kit to make it feel luxe and really special. Here’s what this kit has in it:
- A custom painted tin with Cricut designed branding on the front.
- 1 x 100ml bottle with custom lettering, that contains 50ml of campari and 50ml of vermouth
- 1 x 50ml bottle with custom lettering, containing gin
- 1 x stirrer (or metal straw)
- 1 x linen coaster with heat press branding on it
- 2 pieces of dried lime and 2 pieces of dried blood orange
Using the above, you can make a Negroni, Americano and a gin and mixer with dried lime. I have created a card to print and put in the kit which explains that in more detail so the receiver knows what to do. Click here to download it.
You need:
- Cricut Maker 3 (you can do this project with any of the machines)
- Matt Black Smart Vinyl
- Transfer tape
- Heat Transfer Material in black
- A tin lunch box
- Small bottles
- Dried lemon and lime
- A straw or stirrer
- Linen cut into coaster size
- Scissors
- Spraypaint (choose one that works on metal)
- Cricut tools
Creating My Design
To create the design, I simply used the canvas in Design Space and Cricut’s fonts and images to lay it out. I took some time to go through the image library to find three line drawn images that would be cohesive and would sit on the front of the tin box (the tent, surfboard and fish). They didn’t come in a set or anything but I was able to pick from the huge library and I think they work well together. I then simply made the design for the front of the box by laying out the words and using the curve tool to bend the word into an arch. I also create little word designs for the front of the bottles, and tiny symbols to be cut out in Heat Transfer Smart Vinyl for the linen coasters.You can access my design here.
How to
1
To start with, I spray painted the lids of the tin boxes and let them dry overnight.
2
I then cut out my design using the Cricut. To do this I placed the Smart Vinyl into the machine and followed the prompts in Design Space to make it. The app is so great because it takes you through every step including choosing the right material and the right blade.
3
Once that was all cut out, the next step was to weed the designs using my weeding tool. This is essentially a process of removing all the negative space so that all is left is the design. If there are big pieces of vinyl I like to keep those to use for other projects!
4
I then cut some transfer tape to match the size of the designs and pressed it down on top of the designs, flipping it over and carefully peeling back the backing to leave the designs on the transfer tape.
5
Once my designs were all ready to be applied, I first did the tops of the lids with the cocktail kit design, and then the bottles with words to say what was in them.
6
Once the bottles were labeled, I filled them with the spirits and closed them tightly.
7
Once I had applied the vinyl designs onto the lids and the bottles, I cut out the small symbols in Heat Transfer material, and used the Heat Press to press them onto the linen coasters.
8
To finish the project, I assembled the cocktail kits, first adding the linen coaster, then the bottles, stirrer and finally the citrus.
I love these so much! And can’t wait to give them to Ben and my Dad.
This project is in collaboration with Cricut.
