If you own a Cricut and want to DIY birthday decorations, cards cake toppers and more then this resource is sure to inspire you! Birthdays are special occasions that call for unique and heartfelt expressions of love and appreciation. What better way to celebrate than by infusing your personal touch into every aspect of the festivities? We will dive into the world of Cricut ideas for DIY birthday decorations, providing you with inspiring ideas, step-by-step tutorials, and tips to create unforgettable memories.
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DIY Birthday Theme
While you do not need a theme for your birthday party other than the fact that it is a birthday, sometimes picking a theme can be fun! You can choose a favorite hobby or interest of the guest of honor.
For this tutorial, I am going to show you items for an Alice in One-derland birthday party. A great way to get started with a theme is to look on Pinterest. If you create a board for your birthday ideas, as soon as you start to add a few items to the board, Pinterest will start to suggest other ideas to you.
DIY Birthday Banner
The inspiration banner that we started with, which is shown below, consists of a two layer banner shape with leaves and rolled paper flowers on it. Full disclosure . . . this is not my image! I found it on Pinterest and when I clicked on it so that I could link you to the full tutorial and give credit to the person that made this piece I discovered that the website no longer exists, therefore I could not link to it.
Now to make this banner fit the party theme!
Since the theme for the party is Alice in Wonderland, and there is the well known phrase about painting the roses red in that story, we decided to make the roses for our banner red. You can download the rolled paper flower SVG that we used HERE.
For the actual banner shapes we used the blue from Alice’s dress and then layered white over the top to look like her apron.
The font used on this banner is called Luminari, and it can be downloaded HERE. After you download it, you will need to install it on the device you are working on with Cricut Design Space. If you want this same font to work no matter if you use Design Space on your computer, ipad or phone then you will need to install it on all three devices.
DIY Birthday Cards
Since making birthday cards is such an in depth topic, I actually have a whole article filled with handmade card ideas HERE. You could easily change out the colors and themes in any card style to go along with your DIY birthday theme. For example I created this pop up box card with Alice themed stickers that was perfect for me to give to the birthday girl!
You could also create thank you cards with tea cups in the colors of each character. I did that for this set of Thank You cards. The top half of the card is left empty so that you can add your own sentiment, or use one of the ones from my Thank You bundle!
DIY Birthday Yard Sign
As the guests arrived at the party, they were “greeted” by some adorable card soldiers from the story of Alice in Wonderland. For these we were inspired by another crafter, and we did find some different variations on this project. Some used painted designs and others used actual oversized cards you can purchase on Amazon, which is the direction we decided to go for this party.
I have included a link below so you can purchase the oversized cards easily, and a photo of the completed project for reference.
I did create the elements that would be cut for the head and shoulders of this card soldier in the CREATE software, which goes along with my StarCraft Solo machine. One of the things that I love about the CREATE software is that I am able to export my designs as a SVG file. Because of this, I was able to export these elements into a SVG that you can download below!
If you have never used a SVG file, please read through my article on the topic HERE.
DIY Birthday Decorations
For this birthday party, the parents wanted all of the guests to write a note to the birthday girl that they could save and she could read later in life. To keep with the Alice in Wonderland theme, we created a 3D hat for people to deposit their notes.
In the photos below you can see the hat along with the opening I made in the top so that the guests could deposit their notes to the birthday girl.
You can purchase the SVG file for this 3D hat from Dreaming Tree HERE. I did not do a video on the assembly of this hat since Dreaming Tree has an excellent video HERE.
The only thing that you will have to add is the opening in the top of the hat, which I created by making a rectangle from the Shapes button in Design Space and then using Slice to cut that rectangle out of the center of the piece that became the top of the hat.
Then I added the tag with the 10/6 cut out of it. This is a licensed Disney image that I purchased through Cricut Design Space. It was actually part of an image that was the full Mad Hatter hat, but I only used the 10/6 portion of the design. I just had to resize it to fit the size of my 3D hat.
Here is a tip for you! If you are like me and feel like you can never get your numbers and letters to line up perfectly on projects like this, you can cut the numbers out of the top layer like a stencil. Then when you place the solid black layer behind it, the black will show through and it looks like you cut numbers and placed them on top.
@shawnmosch Cricut Tip! Instead of trying to perfectly line up letters and numbers on a projet, cut the top layer like a stencil so that the solid color piece shows through the openings of the top layer. #cricuttip ♬ original sound – Shawn Mosch
Just so you know, the only place that you can legally purchase Disney designs is from Cricut Design Space. I wrote a full article on the topic of copyright law and the different legalities around crafting that you can find HERE.
Cricut Ideas for Birthday Decorations
To decorate the walls around the party space we created some larger than mat characters from Alice in Wonderland. Larger than mat projects refer to anything that where the finished project will be larger than the cutting area on a Cricut cutting mat. I have also heard these called extra large or oversized designs.
For reference the largest you can cut anything on a standard Cricut cutting mat is 11.5″ x 11.5″, and 11.5″ x 23.5″ is the largest you can cut with the long Cricut cutting mat. I put the overall dimensions of each character in the caption in the images below. The tallest one is 3 feet in height!
If you have never created a larger than mat project, they are easier than then look! The big trick is to slice the different pieces so that each one fits on the cutting mat you have. Then after they are cut, you put them back together like a puzzle. I have two tutorials that show this process HERE and HERE.
While I was working on these larger than mat projects in Design Space, I had an idea to help me keep my layers and pieces more organized. I made each square that I was slicing from the large designs a different color. This really helped out more than I thought it would and it is now my new go to way of doing larger than mat projects! You can see my process in THIS brand new video!
I even did a video of cutting and putting the whole 3ft tall Alice together so you can see the process.
As a blogger, I use a lot of resources for images and videos to layer into my work. If you are interested in adding DepositPhotos to your list of resources for image and video please use my affiliate link HERE to sign up with them.
DIY Birthday Cake Topper
While I did not create a cake topper for this party, DIY birthday cake toppers are a huge trend right now. Luckily I have a blogging buddy that I call the Queen of cake toppers, Tara from Craftara Creates. She has made some cake toppers that would go along with the Alice in Wonderland theme for this party, so I wanted to include some of her images to help inspire you!
To see her Alice in Wonderland clock cake topper click HERE. Sorry, the design is in an Instagram Reel so I was not able to show it off with a preview image here.
DIY Birthday Table Decorations
Sometimes the little details can really help a DIY birthday theme come together. In the story of Alice in Wonderland there are tags attached to a few items that instruct Alice to eat them or drink them. Now, making those same little tags for every cup or plate at the party would have been a lot of work, but creating a couple of table tags was easy to do!
For both of these I found a tag shape in Cricut Design Space, then I made a copy of that tag and lined the two tag shapes so that one was directly above the other. Then I used the Weld feature to join them into one big shape that I could cut and fold along the center. This is the same process that I use when I make Shaped Cards, so instead of doing a new video just for these tags, I would suggest watching my Shaped Card videos HERE and HERE.
Due to the size of these tags, and the lettering that we found in an image online, I decided to go with iron on vinyl for the words. I find iron on vinyl so much easier to weed, especially when you are working with small details like the little dot on that i in the word Drink.
I prefer to use Siser brand vinyl for my iron on projects. I feel that is the best quality brand of iron on vinyl out there, and it weeds the easiest. For permanent vinyl I like StarCraft vinyl. People have asked me why not Cricut brand, since I use a Cricut machine. Personally I just do not like the way the Cricut vinyl cuts or weeds. I think you should find the brand you love and work with that product. Test things out for yourself. Sometimes it is just a personal preference like how some people would rather have Pepsi products over Coke products.
So once you find your brand of vinyl, where should you buy it? If your favorite brand is sold at the local craft store, then you are lucky in the fact that you can pretty much garantee that you can run to the store and pick up vinyl when ever you need it.
For me, Siser was not always sold in the stores, as it is now, so I had to get it from online retailers. Again, this is where you can either go with your personal preference of stores or go where the best deal is. One day the best price might be at one store, and then the next week it might be from a different retailer. We all do this when we sometimes pick up toliet paper at the grocery store, but then we also get it at Target when it is on sale.
I also love that I can order large rolls or small sheets when ordering Siser online. This can give you a larger variety of choices and allow to to save money on larger orders. To make sure you are getting the best price for your vinyl, make sure to check out my Vinyl Buyers Guide. Because of that, I will always share all of the different resource I am connected to and you can choose which one is best for you!
When I first started this site, I had not even heard of MyCraftSource, and now I am an influencer for them! Since all of their inflencers have a special coupon code, that means when you shop at My Craft Source you can get an extra 5% off your order just by using coupon code ShawnMosch at checkout!
Heat Transfer Warehouse is another supplier that I love, and they are actually somewhat close to me. Their headquarters are in North Dakota and I am in Minnesota. They even have their own line of vinyl, and they are partnering with other companies to really bring you a wide variety of products.
You may have noticed that there are a lot of retailers that only ship to places in the United States. This is because shipping prices can really add up. I want to be able to help my followers find their products no matter where they live and that is why I was happy to find some retailers that ship world wide! That is where the next two compnaies come in as options.
Let me introduce you to Expressions Vinyl. When you go to their site, make sure to check out the rewards program. This way you can earn points as you purchase products! Then those points can be redeemed on future purchases.
Another retailer that I work with is Vinyl and Tulle. Use coupon code SHAWNMOSCH to save 10% off your order!
DIY Birthday Shirt
Last but not least, I created a shirt for the birthday girl to wear while she had her birthday cake. This was another design that I made in my CREATE software. Once again, I used the Luminari font that I mentioned above when we were looking at the design of the banner.
Since this was created in CREATE, I was able to save the stack of teacups with the hat as a SVG file that you can purchase from my shop. To recreate this same shirt design, you can just combine my SVG file with the Luminari font to add the large number 1 and the birthday girl’s name.
Because I know that some people will ask, yes, I can sell this teacup SVG because the teacups are not a trademarked item. I made them in the colors of some of the characters which might make you think about Alice in Wonderland but these are not exact copies of the teacups from the Disney movie.
