Create Rhinestone Effect with Hologram Heat Transfer Vinyl

Let’s be honest, we all love a little bling from time to time. When you want to add a little shine to a shirt or something similar, but don’t want to deal with the hassle and expense of rhinestones, you can get the same effect with our hologram heat transfer vinyl(HTV)!

Why you Should Use Hologram HTV in Place of Rhinestones.

With this technique, there are NO RHINESTONES involved - it is just our beautiful hologram HTV. Rhinestones look great but they really can be a pain - and quite expensive - to apply. 

Instead of manually applying each rhinestone until your fingers cramp, hologram iron on will get the job done in a fraction of the time and cost. When you cut this material into a pattern of small circles, squares or hexagons, hologram HTV will create the illusion of real rhinestones because of its 3D, color-changing effect. You can use this technique with text or with designs, just be sure they are not too intricate so it is easy to tell what they are.

Where to get Rhinestone Templates, Fonts & Designs

So there are a few different ways you can get fonts and designs to try this for yourself. If you are looking for free fonts, you can check out some options on dafont.com - Triple Dot Digital and Dot Spot will work for this, but there are also tons more.

Etsy also has fonts in addition to already made SVG templates available for purchase. Just search "rhinestone SVG" or "rhinestone SVG template" and you'll see a bunch of greats designs from talented artists.

If you are a Silhouette user and you have the Designer Edition, you can make custom rhinestone templates. 

How to Cut Hologram HTV

Hologram heat transfer vinyl is a little thicker than materials like matte or liquid metallic so it needs a cut setting with more pressure. As always, we recommend doing a small test cut to ensure you don't waste any material. 

• If you are using a Cricut Explore Air 2, cut our hologram HTV on the custom glitter setting or cardstock setting. 
• For Cricut Maker users, we recommend the cardstock setting.
• If you use a Silhouette Cameo, try cutting hologram HTV on the cardstock plain setting.  

We have a video below showing you how we weeded and applied our silver and purple hologram HTV to create this fabulous faux rhinestone shirt! Click here to get the SVG we used. 

A Little More About our Hologram HTV 

This material should be a staple in any vinyl crafter’s stash. Whether you’re using it for your whole design, or to add a pop of color, this versatile material always stands out. It can be applied with a home iron, heat press, or EasyPress, and it is a cold peel material. We have a few project examples below featuring our hologram HTV.

Have you used this material before? Show us your favorite projects in the comments!