Tips For A Successful Onesie Decorating Station

In the last few weeks I have prepared not one but two onesie decorating stations for both of my grown children. And both had two very different themes and needs since one was for my granddaughter Dorothy, and the second was my soon to be born first grandson Micah.

One theme was for a tiny little princess, and the second one was for a future Marvel superhero!

I really had a lot of fun pulling together both themes and making the vinyl cutouts for each baby shower.

And I learned several helpful tips the first time that really made the second one go so much smoother and easier.

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Whether you are in charge of the whole event, or even just the onesie decorating station, these tips will help to reduce the stress of pulling off a fun activity in place of the traditional baby shower games. Especially now that more and more fathers, husbands, and grandfathers are attending baby shower events more than ever in the past. A onesie decorating stations is a good idea.

So follow these tips, or adjust them to fit your own event.

Take some time to preplan the event.

This type of baby shower activity does take some work up front to be successful. So it is important before the big event to know how many people may be in attendance so you know what to shop for and how many vinyl designs you might need.

Shop early for good deals on the onesies.

I got lucky in that I had store credit from Buy Buy Baby from purchasing my daughter’s crib as a gift during Black Friday deals. For me to be able to pull off two onesie decorating stations without any out of pocket expenses for the onesies was such a blessing. But I realize not everyone will be able to pull off such a deal. May I suggest that you visit some sweet deals on Amazon to help keep your costs low on the onesies.

Prewash the onesies. I followed the suggestions for ironing on most HTV cutouts so of course I pre-washed all of the onesies before the big day.

Use Cricut Design Space™ for an amazing choice of free designs.

Yes this part took some time but I just had fun with the process. I did simple image searches in Design Space for things like baby girl, baby boy, and baby shower. Design Space also has some great designs for phrases and editable images that finding something to use for an adorable onesie shouldn’t be a problem.

Shop Etsy for those custom designs you want – or purchase a kit for the entire thing.

For my future grandson’s baby shower, we had a Marvel superhero theme. Cricut Design Space™ doesn’t have many free designs available for images of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, or any other Marvel character. Knowing I would find some awesome options in cut files, I shopped on Etsy for what I needed.

Vinyl isn’t cheap, so use every little scrap piece you can.

I use a Cricut Joy™ machine so I have the opportunity to make some very small cutouts using a mat. Before I pressed Go on any of the designs I cut out, I made sure to check the required amount of vinyl each design needed and used up as many small scrap pieces as I could. This not only saved money on the vinyl, but also required less amount of weeding around each onesie design as well.

Start cutting and weeding the designs early.

Sitting in a chair and cutting out onesie designs and weeding those little tiny pieces out of each design takes time. I tried to cut out nearly 100 designs on one Saturday and my back paid the price for sitting that long. So for the second baby shower, I split up the task over several days and found that it went much better. I didn’t make as many mistakes on cutting out the designs as I did the first time because I was tired and rushing through the process.

Use Canva to create you own tags and signs.

For each little onesie made, I included a simple tag I designed on Canva that had space for the maker of the onesie to sign their name so that the parents to be could see who made each and every little onesie.

Create and Print an instruction sheet on how to iron on the vinyl design.

My instruction sheet included temperature settings, how long to hold the heat press over the cutout, and even instructions on when to remove the plastic cover over the design without removing the design itself. I found these easy instructions on the Cricut website for each type of Heat Press and just included those instructions on my printouts.

You can Easily download my templates for the Onesie Tags and the Framed Sign.

Purchase a Cricut Heat Press and a Cricut Heat Press Matt.

I was a bit skeptical about the need for a Cricut Heat Press Mat, but I bought one anyway because it was suggested on Pinterest. At the first baby shower, we had a station using the Cricut mat, and another using a layer of towels underneath the onesie. The result using the mat were so much better so I am now a firm believer in using the mat every time.

My husband purchased the a Cricut Mini Heat Press for me as a gift for Christmas and I just adore using that thing! It is small and compact but really gets the job done. Since my designs were small to fit on the onesies, it was the perfect size for the event. I do plan to upgrade to a larger size heat press if I ever make larger t-shirt designs.

At my daughter’s party, I also borrowed a friend’s Cricut EasyPress 2 because that baby shower was much larger and having a second heat press was a must!

Find someone else to help you out so you can enjoy the actual party.

This was such a sanity saver! At both baby showers for my daughter and my son, I was constantly pulled away to greet family and guests. So it was such a relief that I had several young ladies who knew how to use the iron press, and could oversee and assist guests with making their onesies. They had a blast helping out and enjoyed the baby shower so much more!

Have a basket ready to put the finished onesies in to be gifted to the new parents-to-be.

I have seen on Pinterest where the finished onesies were hung on a clothes line. Great idea. However, at both of our baby showers we didn’t have anywhere to hang a clothes line, so a decorated basket to put the finished projects in worked just as well.

Have fun with it!

I can’t stress this last point enough. Creating both of the onesie decorating stations turned out to be a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Our guests enjoyed making them, both sets of parents enjoyed making them, and it was a great alternative to trying to organize and get everyone involved in traditional baby shower games. I think the men attending appreciated that the most.

Hugs,