How To Make Labels With A Cricut Joy

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How to make labels with a Cricut Joy – the step by step photo guide. Get professional looking labels for every part of your home and every DIY home project. Your future home organising tasks will be labelled beautifully when you use this step by step tutorial.

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I’ve long since been a fan of labels – naturally! – and have used lots of different types depending on what project I’m doing – but I’ve always wanted to try creating some of the gorgeous text labels that you see everywhere right now.

They have a really professional feel, and look fantastic on all different types of containers.

They are created using vinyl thats cut out in the shape of each letter.

Doing this by hand is pretty much impossible for the intricacy you would want, so I looked into cutting machines and the obvious choice that I saw loads of people talking about, was a Cricut Joy.

They aren’t cheap – BUT they ARE cheaper than the larger machines in the Cricut range.

As I only really wanted a small machine for labels, then I knew that that the Cricut Joy was the right choice.

It’s tiny – so fits easily into my command centre, and I can grab it when needed for all sorts of labels.

It’s a gorgeous little machine, designed to be quick to use, specifically for small projects using vinyl or card (I say small, but you can cut pretty big labels and banners – up to 20ft!).

Things that you can make with it include: –

Quotes to stick on a wall
Greetings cards
Labels (vinyl shapes and words, or drawn labels using a special pen – for every room in the house!

I decided that I would splurge on it because it would be used for so many projects, so would be good value for money, and better than buying ready labelled containers from stores (I could buy cheaper alternatives and make the labels myself in exactly the right colour and font for my style).

– and I’m SO glad I got it!

So – let’s get started, shall we, and I’ll show you just how easy label making can be…..

All items needed to make labels with the Cricut Joy

Tutorial: How To Make A Label Using A Cricut Joy

Step 1: Decide On Your Budget

This is the fun part! – There are SO many things that you can label around the house, so here are a few ideas for inspiration: –

Bathroom glass/plastic toiletry bottles (label with ‘shampoo’, ‘body wash’ etc…)
Kitchen containers (Herbs, Dried goods, Cereal etc…)
Craft Storage containers
Toy storage
Cleaning item containers
Water bottles & Lunch boxes
Door signs (I like the idea of labelling kids rooms in a stylish or fun way, or the door for the bathroom/utility etc…

For this project, I wanted to do a couple of things in my daughters room.

Firstly, her trolley that she uses as a bedside table, and secondly, her drawers.

IKEA Trolley waiting to add labels to it

We talked about it together (this is a fun project to get kids involved with as well!), and we decided that for the front of the drawer the perfect addition would be some large-ish numbers.

On her trolley (which is used for a bedside table on top, storing her books for bed in the middle, and her clothes that have been worn but she will wear again, on the bottom) – we picked 4 phrases.

Top – ‘Night Sleepyhead’ on one side, and ‘Morning angel’ on the other (so she could turn it around depending on what time of day it was)
Middle – ‘Scribble & Script’ – she wanted to add her notebooks as well, and liked the alliteration!
Bottom – ‘Ready to Wear’ for her clothes.

Step 2: Work Out the Size Of The Label You Need

Use a tape measure on the item you are labelling, to work out how wide and tall you want the label to be.

You’ll need this information when you create the design in step #5.

We wrote down the dimensions for everything and then got the Cricut and my laptop out….

Step 3: Choose The Right Vinyl For The Project

Cricut Joy vinyl is special because it doesn’t need to have a mat when cutting (one thing that makes it much easier and quicker).

You can get loads of different colours, and have it in either permanent or removable – which is handy if you want to stick things to the wall for a limited time, for example.

For this project – we chose black for the numbers, and white for the words on the trolley. These colours would stand out on each surface really well, and go with her room scheme.

TIP – You can also get other surfaces such as paper, card, and even iron on!

Step 4: Download The Design Space

When you get a Cricut – you get access to the Cricut Design Space – which is a downloadable app for your computer.

It allows you to create your designs, choose fonts and shapes etc…, and size them correctly on screen.

It then links with the Cricut so that it knows what to cut/draw for you.

You download it once, create an account – and then you can access it whenever you want.

Step 5: Create Your Design

This is fun!

You can spend hours looking for different ideas, and there’s loads of inspiration from their website as well.

However – for labels like we were doing, it was quick and easy to just click to add text, change the font, and size to fit the dimensions we wanted.

NOTE – You can get a certain number of fonts for free, and you can buy specific fonts and shapes etc… on a one off basis. The best value for money if you are going to use it a lot is to pay a monthly fee (around £8). You get the first month free which is great as you can then see whether you use it enough or not.

Step 6: Cut Out Your Design

When you’ve finalised the design, you click on the MAKE IT button on the screen, and follow the easy instructions.

It will tell you when to add your vinyl, and it will also check that you have enough for the project you want to cut (I love this, because it would be annoying to waste a piece of vinyl on a half done project when you could have saved it and used it for something smaller.

When you follow the instructions, the Cricut joy springs into action and starts cutting for you.

I’ve never been more excited to cut things before!

It’s so quick! – and the cuts are really well done.

Text label being printed on the Cricut Joy on Black Vinyl

Step 7: Peel Off The Extra Vinyl Around the Label

The computer will tell you when it’s finished cutting, and then you can remove the vinyl.

(This is quick, but depends on the size you are cutting – for these small labels it took a few minutes to cut them all).

The next step is to remove all the unwanted vinyl from around the label you’ve just cut.

Be careful and peel it back really slowly.

Some things may catch slightly, but if you’re patient it will come off pretty easily.

Peeling Vinyl from around the cut out label

Step 8: Weed the Excess Vinyl

The only thing you may need to still take off your design at this stage is any smaller bits of vinyl that weren’t part of the pain outline you’ve just pulled off.

These could be the middle of an ‘O’ or the centre of a loop – etc….

This process is called ‘weeding’, and there is a little tool you can get that makes the job much cleaner and easier (because you don’t want to damage the label, especially on intricate designs).

Use the tool, and take off those bits…

Here’s the black labels just before they’ve been weeded:

And the white labels as well….

White text labels printed from Cricut Joy

Step 9: Add Transfer Tape To The Label

Here is where this gets really clever!

Because, for shapes and letters of just one piece (such as the numbers we were putting on the chest of drawers), you could just peel off the back and stick them carefully onto the surface.

Easy!

BUT – for other things such as words and shapes with more than one piece (like our white labels), if you started to peel and stick, you’d have a really tough time trying to make them the right distance apart etc…, and it could start to look messy.

The answer is to use Transfer Tape.

This looks like sticky back plastic – and it basically allows you to pick everything up from the backing of the label in one piece, and move to where you want it.

(It’s more clever than sticky back plastic though, because although the labels stick to it when being picked up – they also come off it at the end…)

Heres a pick of me adding transfer tape to the white label:

Adding transfer tape to the cricut joy label

You have to make sure it sticks really well (because otherwise it may miss a few parts of the design), and they have another little tool for this…

Pressing transfer tape firmly onto label

Step 10: Peel The Label Off The Backing Paper So It’s On The Transfer Tape

Once you are sure that the label has stuck well to the transfer tape, you can start to slowly peel this off the backing of the original vinyl (the one with the label on).

TIP – Do this really slowly because you may still have not transferred everything properly. You can easily just rub over parts again while you are pulling it all off.