DIY Valentine's Day Nail Decals- Cricut

Why spend money on going to get your nails done when you can make DIY Valentine’s Day Nail Art decals with your cricut yourself?

Yes your little cricut machine can make beautiful decals for your nails this Valentine’s Day. We are going to make heart decals and XOXO decals for our nails this Valentine’s Day! WOOHOO!

I do have to admit making these Valentine’s Day Decals for my nails was so fun much to make and apply. I have been putting this off for some time now because I thought it was difficult!

But I am here to say it’s NOT, and your only limit to making nail decals is your imagination!

DIY Valentines Day Nail Decals made with your cutting machine

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Materials needed for your Valentine’s Day Nail Decals

Materials needed for our DIY Valentine's Day Nail Decals — Materials needed for our Nail Decals for Valentine’s Day

Cutting machine
Design Space
Light Grip or Standard Grip Mat (blue or green mat)
Fine Point Blade
Vinyl-(color is up to you-I used white and pink)
Tweezers (can be found with weeding tools or brayer)
Nail Polish (color is up to you)
Sealer(white clear sealer)
Scraper
Weeding Tools

Alright so we have gathered all our materials for these awesome beautiful nail decals for Valentine’s Day! We are now ready to jump on into Design Space and start a new blank canvas.

Making your V-Day Nail Decals in Design Space

WOOHOO! We are ready to make some awesome nail decals that everyone is going to compliment us on! How exciting is that?

SUPER EXCITING!!!

So we are in Cricut Design Space and have already started a new blank canvas. We are going to go into images(left side panel) and grab a heart.

We are going to be working our way through the fingers. LOL Starting with the thumb and going to the pinky finger.

NOTE: Sizes are going to vary for each and every person because we are all different. 🙂

If you need a bit more help with Cricut Design Space You can check out my Ultimate Beginners Guide to Cricut Design Space. I walk you through each and every icon and what it does.

Valentine’s Heart Decal sizes

The first heart we are going to size to 0.378 (W) x 0.357 (H). That is going to be for our thumb.

Now lets duplicate (duplicate top right hand side panel or you can right click and duplicate) that heart and size it to the sizes below.

The Second, third, and fourth heart is going to be 0.28 (W) x 0.265 (H) and this is going to be for your index finger, middle finger, and ring finger. So once you get one sized duplicate it two more times.

Now we can either grab another heart from the left side panel (Shapes) or we can duplicate one that is already there and change the size for our last heart.

The last heart is going to be for your pinky finger and the size is going to be 0.225 (W) x 0.213 (H).

The hearts we made for our Valentines Day nail decals. I did make a few extra just in case!

NOTE: I did make a few extras just in case one didn’t work I would have a few backups. And remember you are going to want at least 10 for both hands. So when they were all sized I just duplicated them to make the other set.

XOXO Decal

So for this I went into cricut access and found the XOXO that I liked and edited it once it was on my canvas.

Lets go into images on the left hand side panel and type in the number below with the #.

XOXO number is #M11893496

Once the image pops up, click on it, and insert it onto your canvas. You may notice that there are a few things we need to do before we size the XOXO. See image below.

The XOXO Image that we are editing for our nail decals. Step by step

Editing the XOXO image

Step 1- Select the image

Step 2- Head up to the ungroup icon in the top right hand side panel and hit ungroup (see image above)

Step 3- Once the image is ungrouped lets delete the score line (dotted line) and the darker pink tag.

Step 4- We are now left with just the XOXO

We are now ready to start sizing! WOOHOOO!!! You are doing a great job!

The thumb XOXO is 0.335 (W) x 0.488 (H)

The size for the next three ( Index, middle, and ring finger) is 0.28 (W) x 0.407 (H) and the size for the pinky is 0.252 (W) x 0.367 (H).

We are now going to duplicate each one so we have them for all of our fingers.

I decided to mix mine up a bit. On one hand I did every other hearts and XOXO and on the other I did all hearts!

Now is a great time to figure out how you are going to be doing your nails with these decals. Do you want a pattern like I did on one hand or do you want one hand XOXO and the other hearts? There are many ways you can do yours and I am super duper excited to see yours!

We are ready to hit the make it button

Alright so you have now decided how you want your nails done!

Lets head on up to the make it button on the top right hand side of your screen. Your mats should look awesome, but if there is anything you need to adjust on your mat go ahead and do that now.

Once you are done, hit continue

On this screen we are going to select the machine we are working with and once that is done we will be selecting our materials. We are going to select Vinyl.

Once that is selected your machine prompts you on what to do.

Putting the Vinyl on your Mat

I am using a white and pink vinyl. You have the choice to use whatever color tickles your fansy!

So lets grab that vinyl and lay it on your cutting mat vinyl side up. If you have bubbles, feel free to grab your scraper and scrap them out before it goes into your cutting machine!

If you’re wanting to learn more about cricut cutting mats I have you covered with The Difference between Cricut Cutting Mats-all you need to know.

Sending your mat with Vinyl into your cutting machine

Sending our Vinyl Valentines day decals to our cutting machine — We are sending our cutting mat into our cutting machine to cut the vinyl for our Nail Decals

This is just to show you that they are both cut and ready to be weeded. I usually weed while the other mat cuts but for this article I chose to wait til they were both cut. See how I trimmed off the access to the pink vinyl?

Sweet! So now our Vinyl is on our cutting mat, HOORAY! Make sure the fine point blade is loaded in your machine.

Curious about blades and which ones do what? I was to and that is why I wrote- Cricut Beginners Guide to Blades

Now lets go ahead and load the mat into your machine. The arrow light should be flashing and that is what loads your mat.

Once it is loaded, the cricut icon is now lit. Lets go ahead and hit the cricut icon and your awesome little machine will start cutting these Valentine’s Nail Decals.

Weeding the Valentine’s Day Heart Decals

Weeding our heart nail decals, but the pink has also been cut as you can see — Weeding the white hearts. Just take the outside off and there you have it! Our V-day hearts are weeded.

Your white mat is now done cutting and ready to be weeded while the other mat is now being cut. Follow the same steps as above to send your other mat to cut.

I used a pretty big sheet of vinyl to cut these hearts on so first and foremost I am going to trim it down to where the hearts cut and save the rest of the vinyl.

Then I am going to take away all the extra vinyl around the hearts so I am now left with 12 hearts on the sheet.

Weeding the XOXO Nail Decal

Woohoo! One mat weeded and one to go. So now our XOXO decals are done cutting, lets go ahead and start weeding.

Again if you used a big sheet, go ahead and trim the XOXO off that big sheet because we can save that extra material for later!

So we want to weed everything off the sheet except our XOXO. So that means the outside vinyl around our design, the middle of the O’s, and the pieces right in between the X’s and O’s.

We now have 10-12 XOXO’s ready and weeded to go on our nails.

Our Valentine's Day nail decals weeded The hearts and XOXO

Painting your nails

So depending on the colors of vinyl you used, its now time to paint your nails and wait for them to dry. For me I chose a red and a maroon.

Make sure they differ from your Vinyl. I made the mistake of using colors that were too close and you can barely make out my XOXO’s. It was definitely disappointing! Learn from my mistakes. LOL

Applying your V-day Nail Decals

Our nails are now dry and ready to be Vinyled:) WOOT WOOT!

I highly recommend some tweezers for this part! Lets grab our tweezers and pull a heart or XOXO up off the backing and simply apply it to your nail where you would like it to go. Once it is on there use your finger and make sure it is stuck to your nail.

Repeat for all your nails. And there you have it! You just made some awesome Valentine’s Day Nail decals for you and your loved ones. CONGRATULATONS!

Once they were all applied, I did take a clear coat to each and every finger to seal that vinyl on.

Congrats on making our own DIY Valentines Nail Decals🥳

Nail decals for Valentine's Day made with our cricut cutting machine

Don’t forget to take a picture and leave a comment below so I can see your nail decals too!

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Would you like to join me in making more Valentine’s Day Projects?