How to add heat transfer vinyl to faux leather using home iron

I came up with this idea of personalized purses when I was brainstorming gift ideas for my son's daycare teachers. I wanted a simple personalized gift in which I can add the gift cards to give it to the teachers. I came across these gold and rose gold purses in Target's bullseye playground and instantly grabbed 4 of them. (No! I'm wrong!) To be honest, I did hesitate a little bit as I have never used HTV on faux leather but you know I love challenges. I put up a post on the Silhouette cutting machine group whether this will work and got a response from a person that" It will melt".And I was like "Ah! It looks like I need to return them back and look for another gift." 

Then I searched in google looking for a tutorial on applying vinyl to faux leather. I came up with a tutorial but they were using the Teflon pillow and Teflon sheet to protect the faux leather and I don't have those and also don't want to buy them just for this project. Then I searched for an alternate solution and ended up in a tutorial where the person uses parchment paper but she used htv on a real leather notebook. I thought why not give a try and decided to try it with parchment paper and a towel inside the purse and it worked. What I learned from this project is there is no need to purchase every new item described to try a new project. Experiment with what you already have on hand. Do you agree? Now let's see how I added Heat Transfer vinyl to faux leather using Home Iron. 

Materials Used:

Faux leather purse

Heat transfer vinyl

Iron

Parchment paper

Electronic cutting machine

Step 1: Use your cutting machine software to design the names. Here I'm using the font: Starfish to write the names. Measure the area where you want to HTV(Heat Transfer Vinyl) and size the names according to it. Draw a rectangle as a border to each name so that it will be easier while weeding. Flip the names if your software doesn't do it automatically. Send it to your machine for cutting. 

 (If you are new to HTV, you will be placing the vinyl upside(Shiny side) down so the machine will be cutting the vinyl in the reverse so you will get the actual name. If you are newbie, you can get loads of info, here where I learned many things about silhouette).

The setting used for cutting HTV

Step 2: Use any weeding tool to remove the unwanted vinyl pieces. Below pic shows how the names look on the reverse side of the cutting mat after weeding. 

Step 3: Cut each name from the Vinyl using scissors to fit the purse.   

Step 4: Stuff the purse or bag with a towel to make it raised and to prevent other areas like zippers from heat. Then place the htv as shown in the area you want. Take a piece of parchment paper covering the whole size of the purse - this is to ensure you don't accidentally melt other parts of the purse. 

Heat the iron to silk setting, if you have a steam iron empty the water and heat it dry. Once the iron is heated, place it on top of the parchment paper for 5 seconds remove it and check whether the vinyl has stuck to the purse , if it did not adhere repeat in 2 seconds interval until the vinyl sticks to the faux leather. Remove the transparent sheet and use the iron for another 5 seconds to ensure everything has adhered well to the faux leather. 

From my trials, what I learned is, no pressure was necessary at least for faux leather material and the for the type of vinyl I used but I am no expert in this and I am not sure whether it may differ with the different brands of vinyl or different types of faux leather. So, do test it before doing an actual project as I always say. Pressure only left marks on the purse. Later, I applied a little bit of heat to the area of the marks to undo it so that it is not noticeable. The first time when I tried, I did it in 2 to 3 seconds interval. Once I got an idea, I went directly for 10 seconds when I did the third and fourth purse. That's it, you now got a new personalized purse that is ready to use or to gift. 

I made these as gifts for my son's daycare teachers. Included some candies, a lip balm, and a gift card inside.  They all loved the gift. Actually, his headteacher commented, "Hey the purse got our name personalized!! and I proudly bragged that I made them 😜 They were all happy and gave hugs to my son 🤗.  This is such a simple gift that can be easily made to win your recipient's heart. Don't worry if you don't own a cutting machine, you can buy the vinyl personalized from Etsy and attach them your favorite gift using this tutorial. Will you try making it? Share it in the comments below 

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