Use the free SVG to make the Holiday Explosion Box with adorable penguins just chillin’ in the center!
My friend Amy (AmyRomeu.com) is the Cricut earring queen! She created adorable penguin earrings last year, and kindly let me modify her design to fit perfectly in the Holiday Explosion Box. (She teaches you how to make faux leather earrings for seriously every occasion. Go check her out.)

I have to admit…. penguins are my favorite animal. I love how they waddle kinda clumsily over the ice, then hop into the water and zoom around so speedily and gracefully.
Ready to create these cute little things??
Materials needed
- The free SVG (located in the Free Files Folder) – it’s design #62 – Mini-Penguins
- Heavy black cardstock or posterboard
- White cardstock
- Cricut Maker or Explore cutting machine
- Blue LightGrip mat (for the card stock or posterboard)
- Green Standard Grip Mat (for the HTV)
- Scoring wheel
- Iron-On Heat Transfer Vinyl (HTV) – Orange for the nose & feet, and glitter or holographic for the scarves
- Cricut Mini-Press
- Parchment paper
- Glue such as Aleene’s Tacky Glue or Art Glitter Glue
* Links to products are for your convenience finding tools and materials, however, they are affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. *
How to create the pair of penguins for the center of a holiday explosion box
Download the free SVG from the Free Files Folder. It’s design # 62 – mini-penguins_minorDIY.zip.
Unzip the file. Upload the SVG file “62-mini-penguins_minorDIY.svg” to Cricut Design Space and insert it onto the canvas.
Ungroup.
Select the two cut lines as shown in the screenshot below.
From the Operation menu, choose Score.

Now, Attach those two score lines to the base piece below them, as shown in the screenshot below.

Click the green Make It button.
Cut the black base from heavy cardstock or poster board. Posterboard is stiffer, so I prefer to use it.
Cut the bodies from white cardstock.
Use HTV for the nose, feet, and scarves.
Tip: It’s especially helpful to use iron-on vinyl when you have small, fine designs. It’s hard to weed the small bits out; cardstock would probably rip when it was being cut out and would be impossible to glue in place.
After everything is cut out, glue the white bodies onto the black cardstock.

Next, place the orange HTV (with the clear plastic sheet side up) on top of the cardstock. Align it so that the feet are on the tab, under the score line.

Place parchment paper over the HTV.
Next, press the Cricut Mini-Press straight down on the HTV for about five seconds using the lowest heat setting.
Tip: Test the HTV on a scrap piece of cardboard first.
I found that the lowest heat setting worked best, while pressing for a very short amount of time.
If the heat is too high, or it’s pressed too long, the melted adhesive leaks out from underneath the piece of HTV. (This only happened on the orange (non-Cricut) material.)

Now, layer the scarf HTV on the bodies.
I found that foil HTV didn’t look great for the scarves. It wasn’t smooth due to the layer of white card stock over the black. The glitter HTV looked much better.

Aren’t these little penguins just too cute??

Now, repeat the steps for the second pair of penguins.
You can see in the photo that the blue foil scarf is bumpy and the noses were pressed too long in the first pair.
I learned from trial and error, so the second pair is better.

Next, glue the backs together (not the tabs.)

Using the tabs, either glue the penguins to a base, or glue them down directly in the center of your Holiday Explosion Box.

Totally adorbs, right?

I hope you loved creating mini-penquins for the center of your Holiday Explosion Box!
If penguins aren’t your favorite, other options for the center of the Holiday Explosion Box include:
- a snowman
- a menorah
- three Christmas trees (in the original tutorial)
Don’t want to forget this?
Save it for later by pinning it on Pinterest.
Click the image below to Pin it.
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