The Current Bane of My Existence: Cutting & Weeding Vinyl on my Cricut

Piss off, vinyl!

I know I’ve only had the Cricut for about a month and a half but I am not what you call a patient person. I am also quite handy. Need a TV mounted to the wall? I’m your girl. Put together a cabinet? No problem. Build a website? Sure. I can figure stuff out. That’s just me. So when I watch YouTube videos of these ladies peeling the vinyl away so perfectly, it sinks my confidence. Like what the heck? This isn’t hard! THEY can do it. Why can’t I?

As the vinyl emerges from the Cricut, this is ME. Where are the cut lines??

The YouTubers are weeding the small unwanted pieces way like they have super hero capable eyesight and their vinyl doesn’t tear. Well, that’s annoying. Guess what? Standard settings don’t usually work. You’re going to waste a lot of materials until you get brave enough to just put that knob on CUSTOM and change those settings in Design Space. It’s ok. Just raise that pressure setting to 250. They were smokin’ something when they defaulted it at 160. You’re not cutting anything with that wimpy pressure. Wanna go crazy? Make it do a 2nd pass. Did you know you could do that? You totally can. Just change those settings or make new ones if you’re scared about messing up the defaults.

That’s the easy part… weeding? Not so much.

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Sticking To It • My Foray Into Sticker Design & Selling

My forté is graphic design. That’s no secret. In 2018, a friend of mine at work was looking for some birthday party decorations and she had shown me some she had found on Etsy. I was appalled at how much someone was charging for print at home, digital downloads. I told her that she was crazy to be spending that much on simple 8.5″ x 11″ designs (we’re talking $20+) and that I could help her for much less and the designs would be BETTER. Later, she encouraged me to start my own store.

So for the past three years, my business model with Etsy has been 100% digital. My motto is that “I’m the best friend that you didn’t know you needed.” My target audience was Moms like me who liked to throw birthday parties for their children that only looked lavish without breaking the bank. I have been known to go a bit crazy with the celebrations with my own daughter’s birthdays so why not share my creations with others and help support our Disneyland vacation habit in the process? 😀

This model has worked for me. By far, the most popular items in my Etsy store are from the Greatest Showman. I fell in love with that movie 3 years ago and it’s been very good to me. This movie is popular with little kids and adults alike. There is something for everyone and the product love has been universal.

When I got the hair-brained idea to buy myself a Cricut Cutting Machine in January 2021, my intention was to make vinyl decals. I soon discovered that it’s an acquired skill. And until I hone that skill properly, I won’t be selling any decals any time soon. They not only require good design but they require a steady hand, proper tools, good lighting and TIME. There is a reason why people charge a premium for decals. The next best thing and a bit more centered in my wheelhouse of expertise are stickers. I could combine my graphic design skills with that of the Cricut and create fun laptop stickers, water bottle stickers, cellphone case stickers and more. The best part has been coming up with the designs & I made sure to start with some of my favorite pop culture icons – Schitt’s Creek, Parks & Recreation, Hamilton, The Vampire Diaries and yes, even The Greatest Showman.

An important lesson that I have learned is that the cost to produce ONE sticker is the same as the cost of producing 8, 10 or even 12 stickers. It all depends upon how many you can fit on a sheet. The cost to mail ONE sticker is the same for mailing SIXTEEN stickers. Selling one sticker at a time is not cost effective at all. I learned this VERY quickly. I have bundled the stickers by theme but I am willing to create custom bundles by request. The minimum bundle is 8 Stickers for $8 which works out to about $1 a sticker. 8 stickers is a good quantity as stickers will measure between 2.5″ to 3″ at their largest width or length. I can fit 8 stickers on a sheet using these sizes which are comparable to other stickers on the market. Check out the options below & if there are certain themes that you’re looking for, let me know! I can custom create them FAST.

STICKER SHOP

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Is it Cricut or CRYcut?

Towards the end of 2020, I got it in my head that I wanted a Cricut cutting machine. I threw out some subtle hints – like putting it on my Amazon wish list and hoped Santa would consider gifting me one. He didn’t but what he gave instead was loads better (but that’s for another post to talk about). So I saved some money and took the plunge myself in January and ordered myself a Cricut Air Explorer 2. It’s a pretty blue one like in the photo. Lots of blogs, Instagram posts & Youtube videos later I felt pretty confident when the machine arrived. People seemed to really stress how difficult Design Space is to work with (it’s not. I mastered Adobe Design Suite. I can certainly handle Design Space). Did I just say that out loud? For the most part Design Space IS pretty intuitive yet I am sure I haven’t unlocked all it can do. For now I am working on mastering my sticker game.

The most frustrating part – aside from weeding vinyl (forget Design Space, GAH! Weeding sucks!) – has been figuring out the best settings to die cut stickers. It depends on your paper, if you laminate your stickers, how new your blade is, etc. Well my blade is NEW. I was copying the settings of some pretty popular crafters and I just wasn’t getting clean cuts. And while I know this stuff takes practice all I could hear was the Cha-CHING! each time I wasted paper & laminate. I needed to perfect this QUICK. Did you know that when you go into the materials settings in Design Space, you can edit not only the pressure but also how many passes that blade makes? Now seasoned Crafty Susans are thinking DUH! Well, excuse me. I’ve had this machine a month. I have always tended to just skip to the good part – read my grade school report cards – “Kris needs to learn to read directions.” Word of advice from this newbie? Pay attention to those YouTube videos. They are very helpful. And thank you to whoever suggested doing a double pass on laminated stickers. Game changer.

So while I am feeling pretty good about my stickers, vinyl is another story.

 

This is one of my first attempts at a vinyl decal. It took 3 tries to weed it without the vinyl sticking to itself or Snape’s wand snapping off. Snape’s wand. The jury is still out on this decal. I have gone through the car wash once so far and that wand made it out ok but when I went to dry the car, I wiped the towel over the window and it came peeling off. So I pushed it back on and it is doing ok. I do think that the decal will need to be replaced and I may need to adjust the artwork so that the wand is a little larger. I just hope it doesn’t look weird because I have always loved this piece of art.

My next attempt was a Grogu (Baby Yoda) decal for my nephew’s car. This was a lot easier. I only messed up & had to re-do it once. 😀

 

My next project was t-shirts. My daughter saw the holographic HTV at the store & said we should get it. And I managed to make her this shirt for our upcoming Mouse House trip in May (remember that cool gift that I got from Santa?):

Easy peasy. Now to take on LAYERING the vinyl.

 

Not bad. BUT I did get some heat lines on the design – in particular the Mickey “O” when I ironed on his buttons. So that sticks out at me like a sore thumb but the kid said she didn’t notice and will wear it. Now, keep in mind that the only heat press that I currently have is the Cricut Mini Press. Yes. I did these shirts with that. It’s possible if you do it piece by piece and yes, it IS a pain in the butt to do it that way. And YES. I have been coveting the Cricut Easy Press 2 (12×10). But right now I just can’t justify the cost just so I can make us a couple shirts for our vacation. Someday, though…

This is my next project – a pair of shirts for our journey to Batuu.

So far, I have managed to mess up 1 shirt because the tiny details of Grogu’s face didn’t weed (I tried to draw on his nose with a pen. BIG mistake!) & I couldn’t see the weed lines of the glare on his balloon.  Yes, I have a light board. Yes, I pointed additional light at an angle. I am just freakin’ blind, even with glasses. I think one of those magnifying glass/light thingies is in my future. I heard about the baby powder trick to see the weed lines. I may break down and do that if necessary but man that sounds messy and knowing me, IT WILL BE. My 2nd attempt was also a weeding disaster. I was so focused on Grogu (which DID turn out better albeit his nose is still too small) that I missed one of the swoosh lines from the Millennium Falcon taking off. GRRRRR!! I have cut that part off and may put Grogu on an old pair of capris. So that was a whole roll of black HTV down the tubes. I have purchased another roll – a different brand that I hope to have better luck with. But I have to replace the shirt I messed up on.

This is becoming an expensive hobby.  So I will have to save up to CRYcut for another day.

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