Cutting Cricut glitter iron-on vinyl with a Silhouette Cameo

My daughter requested a mermaid party for her birthday this year, and I had so much fun making it special for her!  I knew she'd love wearing a special birthday outfit, so I made a glittery mermaid shirt and gathered skirt out of mermaid fabric.

I have a Silhouette Cameo (a fun little machine that cuts custom shapes), but I could only find Cricut glitter heat transfer vinyl at Michael's.  I figured it would be similar enough to be able to use in my Silhouette Cameo.  WARNING!  The pre-set Silhouette settings are wayyyy off!  I immediately ruined my cut board and about half my vinyl.  Lesson learned...do a small test cut first!

To save you the same heartache, here are the settings I used:

Ratchet depth: 3
Cut Speed: 4
Thickness: 10
Double Cut: Yes

It was super easy to weed, didn't cut through the vinyl backing, and definitely didn't ruin another cut board.

To make the mermaid, I Googled for images of mermaids.  I wanted a mermaid that was pretty but not sexy.  I used Silhouette Studio to trace the mermaid and make a cut file.  Then I cut her out of Cricut iron-on glitter using the cut settings above.  I ironed the mermaid onto a plain white shirt, and voila!  Special party shirt!!!

For reference, the shirt is a size 3, and the mermaid is 7" tall.