How to Make Custom Tumblers with Silhouette CAMEO or Cricut

In today’s post, you’ll learn how to easily and quickly customize an acrylic tumbler. You can pick up tumblers quite inexpensively, and with a Silhouette CAMEO or Cricut cutting machine, the sky’s the limit on your design! These tumblers make GREAT gifts, too! Let’s get started.

In this previous post, I showed you how to find free images from the internet and turn them into a stencil. Well, now that you’ve created a cut file, you can use that same file to create more fun! The Lake Rabon cut file, as well as many more, is in my free Resource Library. You can get access to the library by filling out the form at the bottom of this post. But of course, any svg cut file will work.

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Here is the step by step tutorial for this easy and unique customized tumblers.

Here’s What You’ll Need

Your own favorite design in a cuttable file.
Acrylic tumblers. These are the ones I used.
Rubbing alcohol
Vinyl.
A way to cut your vinyl. There are many excellent cutting machines out there, but my go-to is the Silhouette Cameo.
Transfer tape to easily place the cut vinyl on the tumbler

First, wash your tumbler.

The acrylic tumbler needs to be hand washed to remove any factory residue. After hand washing the tumbler, give it a quick wipe with rubbing alcohol to remove your own skin oils. You want it nice and oil-free to ensure the vinyl sticks well.

For my project, I wanted to make Lake Rabon tumblers. I used the same cut file that I created when I made the Lake Rabon cookies in this post here.

Resize your cut file.

Measure your tumbler and size your design for a good fit.

Next, cut your vinyl

There are so many vinyl choices. I especially like the glitter in this pack.

Load your vinyl into your cutting machine. Here I’m using the absolutely fantastic Silhouette CAMEO. I love this machine!!!

As always, be sure to test the cut you just made PRIOR to unloading the vinyl from the machine. Just lift up a small section to ensure the cut was good. If it’s not completely cut, run it through once more and the CAMEO will cut again in exactly the same spot.

Next, weed your design

Weed means to remove all the excess vinyl that you don’t want in your design. Use one of the many, many weeding tools for vinyl available here. But actually, I often just use tweezers.

After weeding, apply transfer tape to your design.

The transfer tape enables you to easily move your design from the vinyl backing and onto your acrylic tumbler. Without using it, you’d end up with a jumbled mess. You can find transfer tape here. Apply the tape to the front of your design, burnish it with the scraper tool that came with your CAMEO, and lift it from the paper backing.

Here’s mine weeded and with the transfer tape applied to the front of the design and with the paper backing removed.

Now, apply the vinyl to your clean tumbler.

Apply the vinyl to your tumbler. With the transfer tape still attached, burnish it again. The pressure of burnishing it activates the adhesive and ensures a good seal. Then remove the transfer tape. If any of the design wants to remain attached to the tape and not the tumbler, just burnish some more.

After applying the lake design, I then cut out and added the words “Life is better at the lake” right on top of the lake design.

Here are some other custom acrylic tumblers I made for my friends.

So, are you ready to do this?

I’d love to see the custom acrylic tumbler you make! Perhaps use your own favorite lake, your sports team or maybe a photo of a friend’s home for a housewarming gift? Give it a try – it really is soooo easy and fun! Please post your photos of your finished project in the comments below or on Facebook by clicking here by clicking here.

Once you’ve made your cut file, be sure to save it and resize it for other uses. The same file can be used as a stencil for a wood sign, for example.

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You can check out my other diy cookie stencil tutorials in this post and in this post for diy mesh stencils.

Also, be sure to sign up for my free newsletter for more creative ideas. You’ll also gain access to my FREE Resource Library with lots of patterns, printables, and svg files. Just fill out the form below for the password to the library! The cut file for Lake Rabon is in there, too!

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