Personalize Beach Towels With HTV

For Mother's Day this year I made the Grandma's personalized beach towels with HTV (Heat Transfer Vinyl)  If you have a cutting machine and like to work with Vinyl, than this is a post for you:

Note:  While the towels pictured feature several rectangular blocks of color, this is not how they actually look.  When editing the pictures I used the shapes to cover up the names of the children for privacy reasons.  So imagine a towel with the name of the grandmother surrounded by flowers and the names of each grandchild 😉

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Disclosure - This post may contain affiliate links.  If a purchase is made through an affiliate link then (at no additional cost to you) I will receive a commission.  You can read more about affiliate links here.

Beach Towels & Vinyl Scraps

For this project you will need beach towels and a supply of HTV vinyl...and of course a cutting machine, heat press, weeding tools and all other things that go along with a Cricut 😉

Tip:  If you look closely at my scraps, you can see tiny markings in the corners.  This is where I used a Sharpie to write either a 'C' or a 'K' on the carrier sheets.  Some of my vinyl supply is Cricut brand while some is Kassa.  Since each type of vinyl had different instructions for temperature and pressing time, I use this method to keep track of what's what.

Making Scraps

Lets face it, vinyl can get expensive!  Especially after you've shelled out a good amount for your cutting machine, tools and accessories.  Not only do I save all of my vinyl scraps, but I cut my designs with the intention of saving as many scraps as possible.  

For example, with the word 'GRAMMA' - I could have used a longer sheet of burgundy vinyl and had my machine cut the word in one section.  But since I already had a piece of vinyl cut from the roll, I decided to cut the letters out in a way that used as little vinyl as possible.  Once cut, I trimmed off the unused vinyl before weeding and stashed it away.  Then I weeded my design, cut apart the letters and arranged them on the towel for pressing.

Lay out the lettering...

...and press into place.

Moving section by section, I pressed one piece at a time and then made sure to cover that section with a teflon sheet before moving onto the next.  My teflon sheet came with my Kassa vinyl, but you can use wax, parchment or freezer paper as well.  The layer of teflon or paper will provide heat protection from the vinly that has already been applied.

After applying the 'GRAMMA' I began adding the names of the grandchildren (covered in black)

Side Note:  For an excellent tutorial about layering heat transfer vinyl, click here to visit
Jennifer Maker.com.
And then stay there for awhile - absolutely everything you could ever want to know about using a Cricut machine can be found on her site! 😎

Scraps!!!

After getting all of the names in place, I began working on my flowers and foliage.  Look at that use of scraps!  Select scraps of the appropriate size and arrange on your mat.  Then before directing your Cricut to cut, make sure the designs are arranged (on the mat on your screen) in a way that they will line up with your actual mat.  This can be a little tricky to get right, but once you do it is a time saver as well a way to avoid wasting supplies!

Here is a video tutorial from Jennifer Maker where she explains how to arrange items on the Design Space mat.  Her purpose is to cut more than one color of vinyl at a time, but the concept is the same.

Lay Out The Design

Once cut, I positioned the flowers and foliage the way I wanted them to create an overall plan.  Each piece has to be individually applied, but I wanted to have an idea of where I was going before I started.

Start Layering

Similar to how I applied the lettering, I began layering the flowers.  I learned through the process that some lighter colored vinyl (the yellow here) allows darker colors to show through.  From then on I made sure to place it on the bottom.

Add Foliage and Details

Green leaves and black flower centers finished the grouping off nicely.

And that's how easy it is to personalize beach towels and
make your vinyl supplies last as long as possible!

What have you been creating for the summer season?
I'd love to hear from you!  Email me at
Studio27byJenniferAdams@gmail.com or comment below

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Studio 27 by Jennifer Adams 2020

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