Custom Pint Glasses

My husband is a geek and loves craft beer. So it really only made sense to combine these two things into a gift for him for Father’s Day. While he loves many geeky things, computers are his one true love (after me, of course). He is constantly making binary jokes. I decided to put some binary onto some personalized glassware just for him. Let’s see if he realizes that it’s not just binary but that it spells something! Each line of text represents a letter in binary. It spells out D-a-d. To make this customized beer stein, I pulled out my trusty Cricut Explore and some vinyl and got crafting.

What You’ll Need

• Cricut Explore Air™ 2 machine
• Lime Vinyl
• Standard-Grip Cutting Mat
• Transfer Tape
• Cricut® Tools Basic Set
• Beer glass of your choice – I used a Pilsner Glass

Get Crafty

Load up Cricut Design Space™ and create a text box. Type in the following 3 lines of text to spell Dad in binary:
01000100
01100001
01100100

Set your font type to Sweater Weather which is included with your Cricut Access Membership. Adjust the three lines of text to a size that will fit correctly on your beer glass. You want the image to start about 1″ down from the rim and end about 2/3 of the way down the glass. Once you are content with your design, set the Cricut to the vinyl setting, place your sheet of green vinyl onto the mat and cut away! When it has finished cutting, trim around the lines of text to save the rest of your vinyl for another project. Weed the vinyl – this means to remove all pieces of excess vinyl. The little pieces in the 0’s were tricky but with patience, you will persevere!

Don’t Always Do As I Do!

And now it’s time to learn from my mistakes: Do not use one piece of transfer tape and attempt to lay the whole design down onto a curved glass in one shot. You can see the top and bottom rows of text are curved on my glass. Cut out each row separately and use one piece of transfer tape per strip – the tape should be trimmed to be just slightly larger than your design.

A trick for perfectly straight placement on a glass is to pour water into it. Ensure the glass is on a level surface and add enough water to give you a straight line to line up your design with. I did not do this for my glass as I just worked with the natural curves of the glass. I also have an eye for keeping my vinyl straight (hey – the middle row is straight!). If you are using a pilsner glass, I suggest placing your middle row of text first on the widest area of the glass.

The vinyl is a bit forgiving in that you can lightly place it onto the surface and quickly lift it again to readjust. This is handy when trying to line up 3 rows of text. Thankfully, the middle number of each row is a 0 which will ensure you have them centred nicely over each other.

Use your scraper to secure the vinyl to the glass and peel back the transfer tape. And there you have it: customized beer glasses fit for a geeky king.

 

Check out more awesome ideas for Father’s Day!

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