Making sure that our little ones remain safe at all times in the car is important, especially when it comes to accidents. Sometimes when we get in an accident, we aren’t able to let the emergency responders know that we have a kid in the back.
Thankfully there are these great signs you can put in your car that let them know there is a “baby on board.”
Last year, when we traded in our dead car for a van, we weren’t able to salvage our “baby on board” magnet. We honestly tried, but it seemed to have permanently adhered itself to the hatchback of our car, so we vowed to get a new one.
Well, it’s been almost a year and we still haven’t gotten a replacement. But while our daughter may not be an infant anymore, I knew I wanted another one to make sure she would be safe in case something ever happened.
I thought about getting one of the standard ones again, but I wanted something a little more unique to our van since we lovingly call our car decals our “car tattoos”.
I wanted to make a “princess on board” decal with a silhouette of Princess Leia, and I knew I could go to my trusty Cricut to make it myself! But one thing that was stopping me was that the Cricut Design Space didn’t have the image I wanted to use.
Thankfully it wasn’t hard to upload my own image that I bought off of Etsy into the Design Space to use for my project.
If you’d like to make your own “princess on board” decal or use your own images in the design space, follow along with these next steps to know how!
What you’ll need:
- Cricut machine
- Your own image (or this Princess Leia image from Etsy)
- Cricut cutting mat
- Vinyl
- Cricut transfer tape
- Cricut tool kit
In the Cricut Design Space, you’ll want to go to the last option on the left-hand side that says “upload”.
Once you click that, you’ll be brought to a new screen with the option to upload an image or upload a pattern.
You’ll choose “upload image” and another screen will come up letting you the types of files you can upload. You’ll choose “browse” which will make a window from your computer pop up so you can choose your image.
Once you’ve selected your image, it might take a few moments for the image to load onto the screen.
After it’s loaded, you can choose which kind of design the photo is. Since my image was one color with a transparent background, I chose simple and then hit “continue”.
Next, you’ll be taken to a screen where you can make any changes to the image before you name and save it to the Design Space for you to use.
When you hit save you’ll be taken to a gallery where your uploaded images are stored.
To use the image, you’ll select the image and click “insert image”.
You can also hit cancel if you decided against using the image for your project and it’ll take you back to the Design Space main screen. And don’t worry about having to re-upload the image, it’s still saved in your gallery!
After I inserted my image, I added three rows of text to say “princess on board”. You can use whatever font you want, but I used the Cricut fonts Wanderlust for the word “princess” and Bank Gothic Std Light for “on board.” To make the words line up the way I wanted to, I highlighted the phrase, clicked “align” along the top of the design tools and chose “center horizontally”.
I then selected the whole project and clicked “attach” at the bottom right-hand side of the Design Space.
Attaching all the elements together helps to make sure that when I cut the design, it cuts in the right positions.
Next, I hit the green “make it” button on the top right-hand side and followed the prompts by making sure the design fit on my cutting mat, that I was connected to my Cricut Machine, and that I had my machine set for the correct material setting.
I put the vinyl on the mat and loaded the mat into the machine by pressing the load button. Then as soon as the Cricut C button started blinking, I pressed it to let the machine work it’s magic!
Once the design was done being cut, I unloaded the mat and removed the vinyl from its sticky surface. I cut out off the excess vinyl to save for later and carefully removed the “negative” part of the design. To get the little parts out that remained, I used my weeding tools to help me out.
The next thing I did was cut out a piece of my transfer tape that would cover the design, took off the backing and covered the design with it. The transfer tape helps to move the image from the paper backing to the surface it was intended for.
The design’s ready to put on the car to help keep my daughter safe!
To put the design on your car, you’ll want to make sure the surface where it’s being placed is wiped clean of any dirt and dust so the decal lasts longer. Once it’s clean, take off the paper backing from the design. You’ll want to be careful in lining up your design so it’s not crooked, so I recommend hovering the design over the window while you make sure it’s where you want it.
Once you’ve got the placement of the design where you want it, press the design against the window then carefully pull off the transfer tape until the design is fully stuck on the window.
I really love how this vinyl decal turned out and my daughter loves it too! I also feel a little bit safer knowing that people can watch out for her in case of an emergency.
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.
Im pretty new to using my cricut, although my husband has bought me 4 different ones. Do you have to print this backwards to stick in on the inside of your window?
You don’t need to do this one backwards. That’s only for Iron-On vinyl for shirts and fabric. Feel free to ask any questions! I’m glad to help!