I like to put together a Christmas Eve Box for my children. Each year I find some new pyjamas for them as well as some treats, like a special hot chocolate, a new film to watch and perhaps some activities or games to keep them busy. They love to sprinkle reindeer food too and this year I thought I would make our own magic reindeer food tubes and label them using my Cricut Maker.

Magic reindeer food tubes supplies:

Plastic test tubes with plastic stoppers

Bird seed

Cricut Maker

black and red vinyl

transfer tape

How to make magic reindeer food tubes

Sprinkling reindeer food is something we do on Christmas Eve before my children go to bed. They love to leave something out for Father Christmas, and something for the reindeer too. I bought reindeer food for a few years but I found it often contained glitter which was a real pain to clear up in the dark. My Magic reindeer food tubes are simple and contain only natural ingredients.

I sourced the plastic test tubes from eBay. I bought a pack of 10 but only needed nine.

I bought an svg file from Etsy which contained all the names of the reindeer – Blitzen, Dancer, Dasher, Vixen, Comet, Donner, Prancer, Cupid and of course Rudolph. I wanted to cut all the names from a gold vinyl except for Rudolph which I cut from red vinyl.

I opened Cricut Design Studio and created a new project. I then uploaded my svg template to the Cricut Design Studio. I measured the size of my test tubes and re-sized my file to the correct size. I then set it to cut the vinyl, which I weeded and added Transfer Tape.

I cut each vinyl name so they were all separated.

Then I could start applying each vinyl to the test tube.

I removed the Transfer Tape backing and placed my vinyl on the tube, close to the top. I gently pressed it down, smoothing it with my fingers, and carefully removed the Transfer Tape.

I smoothed the letters down again with my fingers. I did the same process with each name until I had a whole batch of tubes labelled with the names of the reindeer.

The final step was to fill each tube with our very special reindeer food (also known as bird food). Some people add oats and edible glitter – just make sure it’s something you can clean up easily and isn’t harmful to animals.

I’m really pleased with how are reindeer food tubes turned out. I can’t wait to see what my children think of them when they discover them in their Christmas Eve Box.