Made an adorable Sesame Seeds Elmo for my notebook with the Sesame Street Back to School Digital Mystery Box and remembered some vinyl tips along the way.

The boring old school marble notebooks are really cheap around back to school time, so I pick up a few notebooks to take notes while I work or keep track of certain things around the house. Because these notebooks are bound together, I don’t have to worry about losing any pages. They work great for my purposes but are a little boring. Using my Cricut and the looking into the images that were included in the Sesame Street Back to School Digital Mystery, I knew I would find something fun to liven up my notebook. 

The mystery box has four image sets, one of them is named Sesame Seeds. I do not quite get the theme but the images are silly and cute so I thought they could make for a fun image for the front of a plain notebook. I did this quickly, so it is not the perfect project, but it makes me smile to look at it and serves as chance to share some helpful tips. You can see some of the images from Sesame Seeds below.

You can find the image set by looking at the image options (you can start off by selecting the icon of the hot air balloon) and the choose to do an advanced image search for image sets. Just search for Sesame Street and it will be one of the options. Remember that even if you missed the mystery box, you should still be able to get the image set or buy each individual images that you would like.

I decided to make the standing Elmo, isn't he cute? I made Elmo large enough to cover the area where you normally write in the name and subject because I did not need that, but you are always able to modify the size to fit whatever space you would like. Using the new feature in Design Space, I used the option for working with vinyl so that I could set up the working area that I would like my sticker to fit in. It made the canvas area work with a fixed measurement so that it was easier to just work with my image, but don’t worry you can modify the canvas size if you change your mind about the size.

 

Helpful Tips:

• How to avoid bubbles: As you may be able to tell, I have some bubbles on my image – you can reduce the chance of bubbles by making sure that you are using good transfer tape to transfer the vinyl to your notebook. I used the Hobby Lobby brand and it did not work that well for me on the Oracal vinyl. Another tip to reduce the chance for bubbles is to be sure you have a good scraper tool and take out the bubbles as you pick up the vinyl with the transfer tape and check for bubbles when you apply it to the notebook.
• Working with paper/cardboard as a surface: When working with a coated paper surface like this notebook cover you want to avoid repositioning. Even though I had some bubbles in my project, I did not try to reposition the vinyl when I applied because I thought I might rip the cover of the notebook.
• Coordinating colors and altering images: The Elmo image has four colors, black, red, orange, and a different orange to outline the nose. I had a scrap of a slightly different orange which applied to the outline of the nose but looking at it more closely I think it could have been all the same orange. If you want to make certain things the same color, remember that there is a color sync options on the right hand side panel (It is located next to the layers tab) where you can choose the different shapes and group them together based on colors.

Hope these tips help you make some cute vinyl decals to decorate notebooks or anything around the house. I am thinking of making something with Grover or Cookie Monster next, what character would you make first?