Minnie Mandala

Click HERE or scroll down to view the ‘making-of’ process video on YouTube

Products Used

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Another Collaboration

I was recently browsing through files looking for some spring inspiration when I came across this Minnie mandala design from CoolSVG. It was outside of the spring scope for which I was browsing, but decided to go ahead and make it into a cute hand towel for the kitchen. I can’t believe I haven’t already made this design into a physical item yet because it is super cute! It’s wonderful to see that this Minnie mandala is focused on Minnie Mouse instead of Mickey, which is pretty typical with most Disney designs.

I originally downloaded this design as part of a collaboration many months ago with CoolSVG. I’ve previously made two other projects in collaboration with them here and here. I’m pretty proud of the first one as it marked a sort of comeback for me in terms of crafting after the car wreck. It was a great reminder at the time and still stays on my desk as a reminder to keep moving forward, regardless of the challenges life throws out there. The second one of the Sailor Moon stickers has been one of my most popular projects to date.

Cut Setting

As always, remember that the specified settings are specific to the Cricut Maker. For a reference guide to cut pressures for each Cricut setting, check out this handy chart:

materials-to-cut.pdf Download

TeckWrap Craft red soft metallic HTV: foil iron-on setting with default pressure

This cut pressure was almost perfect for this material. The tiniest of pieces weeded beautifully with only the tiniest of issue. The only problem I encountered were more to do with the design than the cut. On an inner ring of the Minnie mandala design, there is a little Minnie silhouette with a cut out of her bow. The bow is supposed to have the thinnest of edges around the cut out to indicate the bow shape. Some of those super thin edges were lost during weeding because they did not fully cut.

Such Disney Feels

But seriously…can we please talk about how amazing this design is for a moment? So many Disney inspired designs exist out there on the internet. So many though than not focus on Mickey Mouse, princesses, or villains. I haven’t seen too many intricate designs that involve Minnie, so this one made my heart sing. It’s so great to see the design include her cute little bow on multiple levels of the mandala. I adore that one circle of Minnie bows that even have the little dots on each bow.

Those dots were super cute, but a tad bit of a pain to weed. Each time I removed the surrounding pieces, the little dots wanted to come up with the rest. For the first bow I weeded, I ended up using tweezers to replace the dots into their correct place. After that first mistake, I took more care to hold the dots down separately as I pulled up the surrounding material to make sure each dot remained where it needed to be.

Is It Supposed to be Holo?

This is my first time trying the flame red color of TeckWrap Craft’s soft metallic htv rolls. When the roll arrived, I was super excited to see a strong holographic effect to it. Let’s face it, we all know by this point that sparkly, shiny rainbow materials make me fly over the moon. So to see another htv that was holographic was beyond thrilling.

Until it wasn’t holographic any more. I originally applied the material onto the 100% cotton towel with the heat press setting of 315 degrees F for 15 seconds and did a cold peel to remove the transfer sheet. Upon removing the transfer sheet, I noticed a few edges that were still a tad loose, so I reapplied heat for a few seconds to get the free edges to adhere properly. I’m not sure what happened between the first and second press, but the material went from an almost glossy, slight holo look to firmly pressed into the material, glittery, not at all holographic look as you can see in the pictures.

These two pictures show some of the weeded away htv that looks super rainbow-y and the pressed material applied to the towel that looks glittery and beautiful, but not at all holographic. I will be reaching out to TeckWrap Craft to inquire as to why this may have happened and to get the correct application settings. Unfortunately I did have to guess as the material had application settings for some of their other htv rolls, but not for the soft metallic. I can’t fault them for that since the material was super brand new when I bought it and the label is a generic label used for all of their htv rolls. Once I receive some feedback, I’ll happily share that in a future blog post for your reference. Until then, enjoy these images of the still beautiful glittery looking soft metallic htv.

I still quite enjoy the finished look of the project. The vinyl has a shimmery glittery look, almost like Dorothy’s shoes in the Wizard of Oz. I will definitely be using this material again!