Party Favors AND Crafts with the Cricut and Vinyl

These were actually made last March, but I never got around to sharing them.  My daughter wanted a Mermaid party for her birthday, and NO ARIEL!  As luck would have it, the Life Is A Beach cartridge for the Cricut had just come out and I ordered it.  It arrived just in time for the party (I don't know what we would have done if it hadn't shown up!), and here are the fun/easy/cheap party favors/crafts we made.

I picked up the buckets & shovels for cheap at the drugstore, and the vinyl is from a sampler pack of vinyl available at printonit.  All of the party guests made the design on the center bucket; the other two are what my other kids got.  We let the girls pick their hair color, and I cut the hair out on the fly.  With a couple of grown-up helpers, the girls layered the vinyl onto their buckets and added their names.

The best part of the vinyl is that it's easy to lift & move, but holds up great.  We still have these buckets over a year later, and if you know me you know that my kids beat the heck out of their stuff!

Here's a closeup of the mermaid (just click on the photo to enlarge).  We used a fine tip permanent marker to draw over the cuts for the facial features.

As an additional idea, my older daughter decorated her hula girl bucket using a Sharpie marker.  She just drew on the extra details she wanted.  You can go a step further using colored permanent markers instead of just the black that she used.