This DIY pup + me PJs set is the perfect gift for the dog lover… especially one that loves a good joke. Sharing how to make this puppy lover gift and how to make your pet picture into a cut file today!
Last year my sister came to me with this crazy idea for us to tackle with the help of my Cricut… a set of matching pyjamas for her boyfriend and his pup. I’m not going to lie, it was crazy but so freaking cute.
I took photos and saved it to share after the holidays were over but here I am one year later just now remembering to share this with you- ha! I hope that it comes in time for you to put together some matching PJ sets for the pet lovers in your life! This is SO simple to make with just one set of pyjamas and a couple blank shirts… and your handy Cricut!
How to Make Your Pet Into a Cut File
We decided to make two sets- one with the portraits and one with nicknames. I just hand lettered those but for the portraits? That was a bit more of a challenge. We tried running the pictures through some image generators but weren’t getting anything clean enough to be a cut file. So I dug deep in my memory archives…
I had a friend in high school who created super cool comic style portraits using a photo and microsoft paint. She would essentially paint over the skin tones with one colour, then the other details with similar colours. It was genius, so I did the same here. Just with my iPad because that’s my favourite tool- but if you don’t have one, pull up microsoft paint!
We found that running it through a high contrast filter first made it easy to pick out the shadows to paint over. You can do this with most photo editing softwares. Then- make it black and white.
As for getting your file? Just use a round brush and make sure you get smooth lines. Keep in mind less detail is better since you want a high contrast look (which cuts out details).
When you’re done, colour the background with a contrasting colour and you’re good to get it into Cricut Design Space! I redid this with a photo of my dad’s dog just to show you a couple steps of the process above.
How to Upload Your Art to Cricut Design Space
I’m going to breeze right over this with a short tutorial but if you want to upload different file types and learn aaaall about using your own art in Cricut Design Space- I’ve written a full blog post with a YouTube video about this RIGHT HERE.
Once you open Cricut Design Space and create a new project, select ‘upload’. Choose your file and click ‘simple design’ which is perfect for black and white designs. If you file is a .jpg (or has a background), make sure to use that magic wand and click the background and all white spots to remove them. This will leave you with what you had coloured black. The preview shows what will cut as you do this.
Select ‘cut only’ file and get it on your mat… you’re home free, friend! Size it and cut it out of iron on vinyl (this is the stuff I always use), making sure to mirror any design you will be cutting out of iron on transfer. You can put this design on literally anything now- notebooks to gift the dog lover? Why the heck not?! But on to the matching PJs…
How to put the pup and me PJ set together
Alright- then iron it on (or EasyPress it on like I do)! But what do you iron it on to? My sister purchased one set of PJs with a matching shirt. That shirt got cut up into the pup’s handkerchiefs. Can you look at that word for a second. Did you know that’s how it was spelled? I certainly didn’t.
Anyways… she stitched a hem for the handkerchiefs and we used plain white undershirts for the PJ tops.
Isn’t that a sweet but also hilarious gift for the dog lover? Adding a silhouette of the pet owner’s face on to the kerchief is seriously hilarious. If you guys do this… please, please send me a photo so I can crack up at the idea again! And thank you to my sister for coming up with such a fun idea!
LIKE IT? PIN IT!
Build a Modern Barn Door
An update! The gift was exceptionally well received, and one year later all items are still worn often :D Thank you again for the help!!