Making a Mother's Day Card with Cricut Foil Transfer

Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and one of the best ways to show you care is to make something handmade, whether that’s a simple card or an elaborate present. For this tutorial, I’m going to be going over the Cricut Foil Transfer System and showing you how I used it to make a Mother’s Day card for my mother.

What is the Cricut Foil Transfer System?

The Cricut Foil Transfer System looks like your standard blade housing, but instead of a blade, it comes with three tips of varying widths (fine, medium and bold) that insert into the housing. The pressure of these tips against the special foil sheets, included with the transfer system, press and essentially engrave the foil onto your chosen surface. You can use the foil sheets and transfer system on cardstock, faux leather, printable vinyl, vellum and kraft board. The housing for the foil transfer system goes where the blade housing on the Cricut Explore and Cricut Maker is, so it’s easy to switch the housing out when you’re ready to use it. It’s small, easy to store, and allows you to add a little something special to your projects.  

What supplies do I need to make this card?

To make the Mother’s Day card, you’ll need:

• The Cricut Foil Transfer System & foil sheets
• Cricut Maker or Explore
• Heavy cardstock in your choice of colors
• Glue or double-sided tape

Directions

For making the card, you can use your own SVG files or SVG files from great designers here, on Creative Fabrica. I picked a basic card image, with a score down the middle and rounded corners to be the base of my card, and set it to be about 7 inches tall, and about 10 inches wide. This will give you a 5×7 inch card when it’s folded in half, which is my preferred card size. Of course, you can easily adjust the size of your card in Design Space to make it whatever size you want. Then, I added a rectangle shape in Cricut Design Space that is just a little smaller than one half of the card. I want this rectangle to be positioned in the middle of the front of my card, so I can place my foil message and flower on it.

To the rectangle, I created the phrase “Happy Mother’s Day!” in the font “Alien”, and set the operation type to Foil, and picked medium for my width. You can use whichever font you want, but for some reason, I thought this font was pretty cool…even though it does have a weird name. After this, select both the rectangle and the writing in the Layers tab, and click “attach”. This will ensure that the lettering is foiled onto the rectangle.

Cut with your cutting machine

Cut the card image out with your Cricut, using either the scoring stylus or a scoring wheel to create a crease down the middle for folding. (I used a pink patterned cardstock for my card base, but you can use whatever color and pattern you would like.)

Next, take white cardstock and place it on your mat. Place one of your Cricut foil transfer sheets over the area of the cardstock where your lettering will be, with the color side facing upwards. Tape down with the provided tape strips, and make sure it is taut across the cardstock without any major wrinkles. Once you load your mat into the Cricut machine, it will prompt you to load the Cricut Foil Transfer System housing. Take your Cricut Foil Transfer System housing and insert the medium tip; then insert the housing where your blade housing would typically be in clamp B.

Begin foiling process

When you’re ready, press the flashing C icon on your Cricut to start the foiling process. As you’ll see, the Cricut will use the foil transfer system housing and tip to press down and, using pressure, foil your design onto the cardstock. Once your Cricut is done with that, it will have you replace the foil transfer system housing with your regular blade housing. Now, this is important – please do not unload the mat from the machine. You’ll need to take your leftover foil and tape off of your project without unloading the mat. If you unload the mat, you won’t be able to resume your project as normal and will have to start over again.

Once you have loaded your blade housing and removed the foil and tape from your project, press the flashing C button on your Cricut to start the cut. You’ll be cutting a basic rectangle, which takes practically no time at all with how fast and efficient the Cricut is.

Once you have the card base and the card rectangle cut out, you can pick your choice of decoration for the front of the card. For me, I chose image #M160C0E93 from the Flower Patch image set. I also added leaves (image #M23EA39D5) from the Darling Animals image set. I duplicated the leaves image and flipped it horizontally to create two sets of leaves to frame my flower.

Next, I cut the flower and the leaves out with my Cricut in my choice of cardstock colors. You can pick whatever colors you want, and whatever colors you think go best with your card base.

Assemble card

Once you’ve cut all that out, it’s time to assemble your card. Following the scoring line, fold your card base in half. With a thin layer of glue or double-sided tape, attach the rectangle to the front of the card, positioning it to be in the middle. Layer the flower, gluing as you go, and set to the side. Glue the leaves onto the paper, then place the layered flower on top.  Let dry, and your card is done! I added a kraft brown envelope to my card, but you can use whatever type of envelope you’d like.

This is just a basic Mother’s Day card, but the possibilities are endless when you use your imagination and the Cricut Foil Transfer System.

Have you tried this tutorial? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!