Although I’ve always lived in the South, I’ve had a few family members live in Boston and have absolutely LOVED visiting the city and New England.  I love hearing the Boston accent (probably as much as they like to hear me say y’all) and anytime I see things spelled like the Boston accent pronounces them it cracks me up.  When my friend Catherine sent me something with “Wicked Smaht” on it from a recent trip up north, I knew I needed to make something with that phrase. Enter my new Cricut EasyPress being delivered and wanting to play with some leather and an idea popped into my head..

Wicked Smaht Pennant

What you’ll need:

• Pebbled faux leather in brown
• White htv
• Red foil htv
• Cricut Maker
• Weeder tool
• Cricut EasyPress
• 1/2″ x 12″ wooden dowel
• 3/8″ drill bit
• Drill
• E6000 Craft Adhesive
• Twine
• Scissors

Have you seen those cute hanging pennants before? Well I decided to make one out of some faux leather I had and put my Boston phrase on it with heat transfer vinyl (htv).

First I needed to find the shape I was looking for in Design Space. This banner shape was exactly what I wanted.  I inserted the image and resized it to ~8″ width and 10″ height to fit the 12″ x 12″ piece of faux leather I was working with.  Then I added “Wicked Smaht” text (in uppercase Cricut sans font) to the design.  Originally I was just going to use the red foil vinyl, but decided to duplicate the text and layer it with white htv behind to have a little more dimension and be kinda similar to the Redsox branding.

When my design was done, I changed the colors to look like what I’d be using and this is what my canvas looked like:

Click “Make it” to separate the items into the different mats (1 color per mat) and prepare to cut.  Make sure both the text mats are mirrored since they will be cut on htv.

Cut the 3 items using your Maker machine, making sure to change the material to the correct setting (htv, faux leather, foil htv) with each cut.

Remove the items from the mat and weed the excess htv using the weeder tool.

Now it’s time to use your EasyPress!  Turn it on and set it to 255 degrees and 30 seconds. Put a folded terry cloth or beach towel down on a hard surface like the floor or a table.  Place the faux leather  pennant on top of the towel and the white htv on top of the leather where you want it.  Put the EasyPress on top and click the Cricut C to start the timer.

After the 30 seconds, put the EasyPress back into the safety base and slowly remove the clear piece from the top of the white htv.  Then place the red foil htv on your pennant slightly lower and to the right to create the dimension.  Put the EasyPress back on top and and start the timer (255 degrees and 30 seconds again). Remove the clear piece from the top of the red foil when the timer is up and applying the htv is done – wasn’t that easy?

Now that the pennant is made, we’ll need to make it ready to be hung!  First we’ll drill 2 holes in the wooden dowel.  Put your 3/8″ drill bit in your drill and make 2 holes in the dowel about 1/2″ from the end, on opposite sides facing the same way.

Now we’ll make the loop for the dowel to go in with the pennant. Put the dowel down, squeeze out some E6000 adhesive the length of the pennant about a 1/2″ from the top and fold it over the dowel to attach to the other side of the pennant.  You’ll need to apply pressure where the adhesive is so use a heavy book or a bag of cat litter… literally what I had on hand that was easily accessible. Whatever works, right? Haha.

Let the adhesive have at least an hour or more to attach under weight.  When it’s dry, the last step is to cut some twine, thread it through the hole and tie it off to create the string to hang it from.  Then you’re done! Hang your pennant and admire!

I’m excited to ship this to my cousin’s wife who is a teacher in Boston and find it’s home in her classroom!  Now what other phrases can I put on pennants?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.