New House, New House Shoe

I recently purchased a new house with beautiful hardwood floors and pale grayish-brown carpet. (The carpet looks way better than I made it sound). I’ve had a long standing rule about no shoes in the house, and this house would be no different.

My husband has never been a fan of this rule because he doesn’t like to be bare or sock footed.  To solve this I’ve bought him a variety of Steelers house shoes. Still, his argument has always been, “What if we have guest and they have holes in their socks, or worse, no socks at all? How can we expect them to take off their shoes?” Normally I would roll my eyes and move on, (don’t judge), but lucky for me inspiration struck while I was wandering the aisles of IKEA one day.

I found these simple NJUTA slippers in black, red and gray, all of the low price of $2.99/each. And lucky for me, the were on sale for IKEA Family members!  Of course I couldn’t decide on which to get, so I bought two in each color. What? A girl’s gotta have choices!

I took them home and placed them in a cute basket by the front door. Success! But what fun would it have been if I didn’t add that special flavor I’m “famous” for?  So I booted up my computer and opened Design Space. This was one of the first projects I completed with my new Cricut Maker and EasyPress. (Yes, Cricut has made a killing off of me in the last few months).

I’ve used Brother’s design program, ScanNCutCanvas for the last few years, so the Design Space format wasn’t to difficult to navigate. I browsed the different monograms and settled on the “H” from Monogram Motifs. The pre-selected color scheme wasn’t going to work for me, but it was super easy to change it up. Since I had house shoes in three different colors, I switched up my color scheme using black, yellow, and white. Yes, Steelers colors. I love that Design Space lays out the different mats you will need. It makes it easy to make the correct number of cuts for six pairs of slippers. Luckily I had all of the needed iron-on vinyl (or heat transfer vinyl – HTV – these names are used interchangeably) colors on hand, so I was ready to get started.

After cutting my HTV pieces, it was time to weed. Being a bit of a novice I didn’t realize how intricate my design really was! This was one of those times when it’s important to have the right tools. In this case the right tools included hook tweezers and a piercing tool (both were all included in the Cricut Weeding Tool set) and a tracing light box I purchased from Amazon a while back. Cricut’s BrightPad would have essentially served the same purpose.

When the weeding was finally done I was ready to heat up the EasyPress.  To prep the slippers  I rolled up a hand towel and stuffed it in the toe so I had sturdier surface.  My slippers were 100% polyester and I was using Cricut Iron-On Lite, so my settings were 340 degrees for 30 seconds. (These are the “towel settings”. If you are using the EasyPress mat the settings differ. Also, the IKEA website says “Do not iron” for these slippers, but I figured if I ruin them I’m only out $2. Sometimes you gotta take risk. And I was using a teflon sheet, so my EasyPress never directly touched the shoe surface). Following the EasyPress directions, I preheat my first shoe for 5 seconds.  Next, since each monogram was made up of three layers of HTV, I only pressed the first two layers for about 8 seconds each, just long enough to get it into place. I pressed the final layer for the full 30 seconds…And repeat.

I was so impressed by my finished product I’ve been sharing it with everyone! (Including the random stranger I met while browsing the Cricut Iron-on section in JoAnn’s.) HTV is a great way to add that personal touch! I’ve got so many ideas for what else I can do!

Until next time, go forth and create!

Supplies used:
Cricut Maker
Cricut Iron-on Lite in Black and White
Siser Easyweed HTV – Lemon
Cricut EasyPress
Teflon Heat Press Transfer Sheets
USB Power Light Table for Tracing