YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I MADE USING HOT WHEEL TRACKS 😱

Hello everyone, welcome back to the Maker's Gonna Learn YouTube channel. In today's video, oh my gosh, you are not going to believe what I'm going to be making using Hot Wheels tracks. So hold on to your seat and get ready for this amazing craft. If you are new around here, Maker's Gonna Learn is a membership-based crafting community where we bring you inspiration, education, and motivation to get your Cricut out of the box and start using it. If you have not already, make sure you like this video, subscribe to our channel, and hit that bell icon so that you can be notified every time we get crafty. With all that being said, let's go ahead and jump into the materials that you're going to need to create this Hot Wheels track lantern. So to start out with, we have our Hot Wheels tracks. Now we got these from the Dollar Tree. You can get them wherever. They just came in a pack of two, which is all that we needed. And we needed this length, so we did get these two pack of Hot Wheels tracks from the Dollar Tree. We also have a wooden sign. Now this is one that I have pre-painted, so I did get it. It's just a standing wooden sign that I have taken the backer off of. It did come with the backer to hang on the wall. I went ahead and removed that and it is painted. You will get these at your local craft store pretty much wherever, and you can paint this to whatever color you would like. While we are talking about paint, we are using the Star Craft chalk and mineral paint in linen white. I love this color. I think it goes with a lot of different decor, so I just decided to go with the linen white. I am using these half wooden beads today, and you will see how I'm going to adhere them to the Hot Wheels track to give it a really nice farmhouse style. We are using some greenery that's going to go inside our lantern once we are finished, and then we have this metallic heat transfer vinyl foil. The link is down below. We got this from Amazon. It's in a bronze color, and that's going to go along the side of our lantern. Just have a little saying on the side of our lantern. We're just going to be using a regular paintbrush to put our paint onto our different surfaces, a standard grip Nicopa mat to use with our HTV. We do have a knob. Now, this knob came from a dowel, so it does have a screw into it that you can cut off if you would like to. If not, you can just screw that into your Hot Wheels track. I have linked a knob down below that you will just hot glue onto the top, but that's going to go on the top of your lantern. We will be using a Cricut Mini EasyPress to adhere our HTV to our wood, and finally, we're going to be using our Lynn Lilly cordless hot glue gun to adhere the wooden beads to the Hot Wheels track. Now that we've gone over all the materials that you're going to need, let's start crafting. Now, to start out with, we're going to go ahead and start painting our surfaces. Like I said, I have already painted our base. You will need to just paint your base. All you're going to do is brush that on, and we are going to paint our Hot Wheels track. One thing that I did not mention as far as materials that you may want is going to be a sanding block. What the sanding block does is it roughs up the plastic. That way, it's not such a smooth surface that the paint is on, and it possibly will prevent chipping in the future. So now what we're going to do, we're just going to take our sanding block and try to rough up some of these areas and give it just a light sand. So basically, what we're doing is we're just scratching this plastic so that the paint can fill in those gaps. Once you have done that, we're just going to grab our paintbrush, and we're going to start painting our track. Now, you're probably going to have to do this in layers, so do a thinner layer first so it will dry a little faster, and then you can come back in and give it a second coating after that's done. You're also going to want to take your paint brush and come inside here so that you can get inside that track and there won't be as much orange showing. Now that I have painted this, I'm going to set it to the side, let this dry, and then we'll come back once it has finished drying, and we will start the process of starting to assemble our lantern. Once your two pieces of Hot Wheel track is dry, what we're going to do is we're going to take each piece, and these pieces are actually going to go corner to corner in your wooden frame. So we are going to take this, we are going to bend it, and it's going to go caddy corner, so corner to corner, and then we're going to take the other piece, bend it as well, and it is going to go corner to corner also. Now, here is a part where you may see the paint to start cracking on your Hot Wheels track. Do not worry, it's all going to be fine because we're going to give it another one over after we add our wooden beams. What we are going to do now is we're going to use our hot glue gun, and we're going to attach the tracks to the corners of this blank. So I'm just going to come in here, add some hot glue on either side of this track, and let it dry, and then do all of the other corners as well. Once I have done that, I'm going to come in and add my knob to the top. Now, this is where if you have a knob that has a screw on the bottom of it, you can screw it through the track, or like I said, you can just hot glue the knob to the top. And you can see I have not painted this. We are going to paint the rest of it here in a few minutes, and then just give it a nice antique look. Once I have added my knob, I'm going to take my half wooden beads, and I'm going to start placing them beside each other all the way down each side. Now that you have glued all of those half wooden beads down, you're going to want to come through and just make sure you grab all of the extra hot glue that kind of locks the spider web out, and we're just going to get all of that away. And then once you have done that, we are going to come back in with the same chalk linen paint. We're going to paint all of these half wooden beads while they're on the track. That way, if we need to touch up the track, we can do that as well. Now, just like with the track, you're probably going to need to do two coats on these beads. That's okay. We will just come back after it's dried and give it a second coat. This is also a perfect time to fix any imperfection on the track. For example, this wooden bead was not exactly where I wanted it to be, so I took it off, and the hot glue brought the paint up, but I can just come in here and touch this up, and you will not be able to notice it. Once you have finished painting, we're going to hop over into Design Space, and I'm going to show you how to size and measure to put text on the front for a really great holiday look. Now that we are here in Design Space, we are just going to use a text. Now, you can use any text that you want. As you can see over here at makersgonnalearn.com, we have so many different texts for you to choose from. We have hundreds of texts, and you can even type in what you want it to say here in the custom text preview to see which text you like the best. So, I want it to say, let your light shine because we are going to be putting a candle in the center. So, I want to preview this text, and then I can scroll down and see which one I like the best. So, I decided just design-wise to come back, and I think I want to just have the L in this phrase capitalized. So, I'm going to preview that, and we're going to come down through here. After choosing which text you want, what you're going to do is you're going to hit this download icon. It's going to download here in the bottom left-hand corner. You are going to unzip that file, open it up, and install the font. Once you have installed this font, we're going to go back to Cricut Design Space. We are going to view Reload Cricut Design Space, grab this text box again, come up here to our font. You're going to find all your makersgonnalearn fonts under System Font, and we chose to go with Moonlight. So, now I'm just going to come in here and type in Let Your Light. Now, as you can see, this is seven inches in length and one point a little over one and a quarter in height. So, what I'm going to do is I want to size our lantern right here to see how much room we are working with, and it looks like we are working with about eight inches by a little over one and a half. So, I actually think that would work. Go back into Design Space. We're going to size this down just a smidgen so it is at the 1.25, and then we are going to cut it. Because we are working with HTV today, we are going to turn the mirror on. We're going to go to Continue, and we're going to cut this on the Everyday Iron-On setting. We will then load it into our Cricut and let the machine do its work. Once that's finished, we're going to unload it, bring it over here. I'm leaving it on my mat, cutting away this excess, and then I'm going to weed this HTV. Once we have that weeded, I'm going to take it off my mat, bring in my lantern, and I'm going to place it on the side here and center it up, and then I'm going to take my Cricut Mini EasyPress, and I'm going to adhere this down to my base. Once your HTV has adhered down to your wood, you're just going to peel it while it is warm, and then there you go. Last thing you're going to do for your lantern is add your greenery and your candles. So I'm just taking wire cutters right now, and I'm cutting off some pieces of this greenery that I like, and then I'm just going to place it. You can bend it however you would like, and we're going to place this within our lantern here, and if you want to, you can take your hot glue gun and glue the greenery down. So I'm just going to take my hot glue and just glue a couple pieces down over here so that it doesn't move, and then glue some here, and then you're just going to keep adding greenery until you are satisfied. Really, that's all I need is for it to look cool-ish, and then after you have added your greenery, we are just going to turn on our little LED candles and add them to our lantern. Wow! I mean, honestly, would you ever think you could make something this cute out of Hot Wheels tracks? I hope you guys have really enjoyed this video. Once again, if you are not following us, make sure to subscribe to our channel, like this video if you like this craft, and turn on your notifications so that you can be notified every time we get crafty. I will see you guys in the next one. Bye!