DIY HTV (Iron-On) Double-sided Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag

Hello you incredible crafter! I hope you are ready to make a DIY HTV (Iron-On) Double-Sided Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag today! I am beyond thrilled to share this project with you!

If you didn’t know I am a coach, healer, and teacher and just love crafting DIY projects that will motivate and inspire me to truly live the best life I can.

I am creating my dream life right in front of my eyes and I hope to inspire you to do the same! We all have gifts and we need to start sharing those gifts and helping others!

Not sure what a chakra is?

Let me explain real fast, then we can start crafting this awesome DIY HTV Double-Sided Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag.

What is a Chakra?

In Sanskrit, the word “Chakra” means “disc” or “wheel” and refers to the invisible energy centers in your body. The chakras are wheels of spinning and rotating energy (life force/ prana) that moves inside of you and each chakra corresponds to certain nerve bundles and major organs.

Each Chakra has its own corresponding color, area of focus, tone, and vibrational frequency. The chakras can be extremely helpful when assessing areas of your life that need support! The interconnection between your physical body and spiritual (energy) body is fascinating to explore.

There are seven main chakras that run along your spine, starting at the root (base) chakra all the way up to your head which is the crown chakra. Some believe that we have around 114 different chakras in, but most focus on the 7 main ones.

If you are on a journey to learn more about yourself and your chakras, CHECK OUT My Complete Beginners Guide to the 7 Main Chakras

How to make a Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag using HTV (Iron-on) using our cricut cutting machine

I am so thrilled to teach you how to make this DIY HTV Double-Sided Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag! This post may contain some affiliate links for your convenience (which means if you make a purchase after clicking a link I will earn a small commission, at no additional cost to you! Read my full disclosure here.

Materials needed to craft this DIY Chakra Balance and Healing Tote Bag

Design Space or similar Program
Cutting machine
Cutting mat Standard Grip (Green mat)
Fine Point Blade
HTV (iron-On) of the colors of your choice
Tote Bag
Heat Press
Weeding Tool
Scraper
Lint roller-canvas tote bags and shirts
Scissors or paper trimmer
Cricut Access
Teflon/butcher/ parchment Paper
Positive Mood:)

To Start this Chakra Tote Bag

The first thing we need to do is open up Cricut design space and start a blank canvas. Then we are going to go into our left side panel and click on the image icon.

Now you can copy and paste these numbers into the search bar and they will pop up. Once the images pop up, select them, and when you select them they will appear at the bottom, next to the cancel icon located in the bottom right-hand corner.

Don’t have Cricut access? Here is a link to see the different plans they offer with Cricut Access

The Chakra Images we are using

The Root Chakra- #MB7641DB
The Sacral Chakra- #MB7641D5
The Solar Plexus Chakra- #MB7641E9
The Heart Chakra- #MB76615C
The Throat Chakra- #MB7641F0
The Third Eye Chakra- #MB76421B
The Crown Chakra- #MB766146
Balance and healing- #MA7B192C
Yoga Balancing Pose- #M8903479

Once they are all selected, let us head down to the bottom right corner, click on insert images, and that will insert the images onto our canvas:)

The images we are working with for our DIY HTV Chakra Balance and healing Tote Bag

We are now ready to size these images.

Resizing the images to fit on our Tote bag

Now it’s time to resize the images to fit our tote bag. Your size may be different from my size depending on what size tote bag you are using.

There are two ways you can do this. And yes I did unlock the images.

First way to resize

You can select the image and drag it out with the two arrows pointing in the opposite directions (bottom right hand corner).

Second way to resize

The second way is to head on up to the top panel and put the exact size into the size icon.

Adjust the size as needed depending on the size of the tote bag you are making. Design Space also has templates for you to use if you are really unsure.

If you need help with templates, you can check out my Everything you need to know about Templates article🙂 Templates are also a good way to see what your design is going to look like when it is all done.

Final Sizes of the images

Remember your sizes may be different depending on the size of your tote bag. You can always play around here and see what you can come up with!

The Root Chakra- 2.163 (W) x 1.899 (H)
The Sacral Chakra- 2.133 (W) x 2.081 (H)
The Solar Plexus Chakra- 2.14 (W) x 2.001 (H)
The Heart Chakra- 2.116 (W) x 1.963 (H)
The Throat Chakra- 2.021 (W) x 1.923 (H)
The Third Eye Chakra- 2.409 (W) x 1.409 (H)
The Crown Chakra- 2.1 (W) x 2.1 (H)
Balance and healing- 8.917 (W) x 9.159 (H)
Yoga Balancing Pose- 2.525 (W) x 2.044 (H)

So now that we have all the images sized, we are going to lay them out like the picture above shows. But you can arrange them differently if you like or use images that you like.

Aligning the images

Optional- This is not a step that needs to be done, but I try to practice good habits.

So I selected the 7 Chakra images by selecting one, holding the shift key down, and selecting the rest. Once they were all selected I went up to the top panel where the align icon is and clicked on that. The pop-up will appear and go to distribute horizontally and click on that. You will see them shift and now they are aligned:)

We are now ready to continue on and click on the make it icon.

Make it

WOOHOO! Oh, we are just so close to finishing this DIY HTV Balance and healing Chakra Tote Bag.

Cutting Mat Screen

We are now looking at our cutting mats in cricut design space. There are eight different mats for this project.

NOTE: ALWAYS make sure that your designs are set to mirror when doing heat transfers, except when using patterns! Patterns I always say check the instructions. You can toggle on the mirror icon located underneath each mat.

If you do NOT want any guessing when it comes to the black mat images, go ahead and rearrange the images here. I toggled the mirror icon on, then moved the balancing person to where I wanted it, and slid the balance and healing image over like the image below shows.

So we are now ready to click on each mat and toggle that mirror icon on. Then it will flip all of our images. YOU HAVE TO DO THIS FOR EACH MAT! So click on each mat and toggle that mirror icon on. I know I have said this many times, but this is extremely important!

Once all the mats are mirrored, let us go ahead and hit that continue icon. (bottom right-hand corner) Which takes us to our machine setup and materials.

Selecting your machine and the Materials

Select the machine you are working with which may be different than mine. I will be working with my Cricut maker. And once the machine is selected, let’s go ahead and select our material which is Iron-on or HTV. In Design Space it is Everyday Iron-on

Again you will be prompted to make sure your mats are mirrored before we start cutting.

Design Space will prompt you that the fine point blade needs to be in clamp B and we are now ready to get our mats ready with our HTV (Iron-on).

Getting our cutting Mat(s) Ready

How to place the iron-on (HTV) on your cutting mat

For this DIY project, we have eight different cutting mats so Let’s grab our 8 pieces of Iron-on and the colors we want to use and order them like the order of your mats. Now let’s grab our green cutting mat and put the first sheet down on our cutting mat which is the black Iron-on, SHINY SIDE DOWN!

This is EXTREMELY important. If you place it the other way it will then cut through the transfer film.

If there are bubbles in your material, feel free to take that handy scraper and get them out.

Want to learn more about the Cricut cutting mats? Check out my article- Cricut Cutting Mats- All you need to know about Cricut cutting mats.

Cutting our Mats

Our cutting mat is ready to go so let’s make sure the fine point blade is the blade installed in your cutting machine. Now we are going to load our mat by pressing the blinking arrow on your Cricut machine.

Once it loads the mat, go ahead and hit the Cricut button to start the cutting process. Watch your awesome little machine go to town:)

You will get prompted when your cut is complete, then all you have to do is unload the mat and peel the Iron on material off.

Now let us grab the next color of iron-on (red) and place it down on our mat, SHINY SIDE DOWN. After this mat, you will have 6 more mats to go. Just repeat the same steps with the other 6 pieces of iron on.

Weeding our images

Now that our design is cut we are ready to cut off the extra material and start weeding our awesome design

Alright, so we are now ready to weed. We are going to weed all of the pieces we do not need. And leave the pieces we do need.

Note: If you used a whole sheet for the cut but didn’t use the whole sheet, trim the excess material off before you begin weeding so you can save the extra material for another project.

Take your time here and enjoy the process. I think weeding is so relaxing! It may just be me, but it relaxes me and lets my mind flow.

Transferring the Iron-on (HTV) to our Chakra Tote Bag

OH we are just so close:)

After the cutting and weeding are complete, we are now ready to transfer our HTV (iron-on) to our tote bag. WOOHOO!

So let’s walk to our heat press and set it to the temperature, which is 315 F for iron-on.

Not sure? I did link the Cricut heat guide below.

If you are using a different material or are just unsure, here is Cricut’s AWESOME guide to help you figure it out.

Step 1

The first thing we are going to do is take a lint roller and roll over the part of the bag that will be getting the design. Make sure you get all those tiny little particles out of the way.

Once your heat press is heated, let’s go ahead and place your tote bag down so we can press it for 10-15 seconds or as needed to get the wrinkles out. We are going to press the area that we are going to be laying our design on.

Step 2

Lay your design out on your tote bag where you want it to be. (liner side on top) If you are doing exactly what I did, we will be using both sides of our tote bag.

One side will be the seven chakras going straight down the middle and the other side will be the balance and healing and balancing pose.

Let us start with the front of the bag, which is the balance and healing person with the balance yoga pose. Let’s line that up in the center and when you are happy with the placement, cover it with the butcher/parchment paper and heat press for 30 seconds.

Step 2- Working on the front of our DIY Chakra tote bag that is double sided. Center the image and once it is centered, place the paper over, and heat press.

Once the 30 seconds are up, lift up the heat-press, then the film and make sure the Iron-on (HTV) is stuck to your bag. It should be, but if for some reason it’s not, heat-press again for another 15-25 seconds.

Optional- You can turn the bag over to the backside and heat press it for another 15 seconds.

Step 3

If your bag is not flipped over already, let’s go ahead and flip it over and again heat-press it to get all the wrinkles out. Once all the wrinkles are gone, let’s line up our 7 different chakra images.

Straight down the center of our bag. I started at the bottom, lining them up in this order. Red at the bottom, orange, yellow, green, blue, blue-violet, light violet at the top.

You will need to cut the film here so all the HTV (iron-on) is on the tote bag and not the film. If the HTV is on the film you will adhere it to the film and not the bag. So make sure it is clear of the film.