- In this Cricut tutorial for beginners, I am showing you how you can quickly and easily burn pictures
or designs into wood with the help of your
Cricut cutting machine. And in the process, we're also making a super cute and personalized tray for Santa's snacks, so let's get crafty. (upbeat music) Hey, I'm Michael, and
this is Mr. Crafty Pants, your Cricut and crafting channel, where I post Cricut tips, tricks, and tutorials every single week. So if you are new around here, and you're just trying to figure out how to use your Cricut cutting machine, well you may want to consider
stamping that Subscribe button and then ringing that little
bell for all the notifications, so that you never have to miss out on a single Cricut minute,
especially during December, because during December, I am doing the 12 days
of Craftmas around here, where I'm putting out
12 different episodes that are Christmas or holiday themed, and that are also using, of course, my Cricut cutting machine. Now not only that, but each
episode is another chance for you to get registered to win a huge Cricut prize package, and that includes a Cricut Maker, as well as a Cricut Joy, with the hopes that you will pay it forward, and give away one of those
to a friend or family member. Now to the fun part,
because to get registered, there is a hidden holiday
or Christmas themed phrase inside of each of these Craftmas videos. And to find them, you basically have to watch the videos from the very beginning, all the way up until the very end, because these phrases are
popping up one word at a time, throughout the course of the video. So whenever you see a word
pop up, just jot it down, and at the very end of the
video, text that phrase into me, if you're living inside the US anyway, text that phrase into me at 502-878-7189. If you are outside of the US, then just email it to me
at mcpgiveaways@gmail.com, and you can submit those
anywhere between now and all the way up until
11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time on Christmas day. All right, so now on to today's project, and I am so excited for this, because y'all, I just
love doing this project. I've actually done two
videos on this so far, one on my channel, and the other on the Design Bundle's YouTube channel. So for this episode, I'm doing a slightly updated
version of that project, but first things first, we're obviously gonna need a few things to make this Cricut
Christmas magic happen, the first being obviously
a cutting machine, and y'all know I love my Cricut, I'm gonna using my
Cricut Maker right here, however you can do this with
any type of cutting machine, as long as that cutting machine
can work with SVG cut files. You're also gonna need some vinyl, some permanent adhesive
vinyl like this right here to make a stencil with. I have tried this out
with different methods, like even a stencil film vinyl, and I have personally found for this particular style of project, a permanent adhesive vinyl
seems to work the best. You're also gonna need
a wood surface, right? And I am using this cutting
board right here from Ikea. Now this is pretty important. The wood that that you're
using cannot be sealed, it cannot be waxed. Basically the solution that
we're gonna be applying to this that's actually
gonna cause the wood to burn, it has to come in contact
with the wood fibers, or it's not gonna work. Now you can do a light stain over top of your wood surface if you'd like to, and that seems to work
out pretty good actually, however like a thick coat of
paint is not gonna do the job. Like it's actually gonna cover up too much of the wood grain, and it's
not gonna work unfortunately. We're also gonna need a
food or beverage thickener, like this Thick-It right here. Now so many people have asked
me if cornstarch will work, and cornstarch is actually one
of the ingredients in this. I feel like cornstarch will work, I would think it will do the job, I just personally have not tried it yet. So if you decide to try it, let me know down in the
Comment section below. But where this actually comes in hand is actually thickening up the solution that we're gonna be creating
with ammonium chloride. And here is the ammonium
chloride right here. Now this stuff is great. It is actually used in some places as an ingredient in candy
from what I read somewhere. It's a relatively safe ingredient, or relatively safe chemical
if you want to call it that, however whenever it's
applied to a wood surface like we're doing today, and actually heat it up with a heat gun, which is next up on our list, I'll be using this heat gun right here. Now it does not have to be this
exact heat gun that you use, however this one does get
up to 495 degrees Celsius, so as long as your heat
gun can get somewhere in that general vicinity, it should be able to work out just fine. Oh, and by the way, a
hairdryer will not work. It just simply does not get hot enough. However, back to what I was saying, once we actually heat up the solution that we create with the ammonium chloride, it's actually gonna cause this
reaction on the wood grain, it's actually gonna burn our
design into the wood grain. It's so, so cool. If you have not yet seen
this, you're gonna love it. It's just, it's amazing. And last but not least, we're also gonna need our SVG cut file, so I'm gonna hop over
to designbundles.net, and I'll show you the
exact one that I'm using. And y'all, is this SVG bundle
not the absolute cutest, like I am obsessed. So let's just take a look
through these real, real quick. I absolutely love these so, so much, and I love that they've
created this tray template that you can use for rectangular trays, as well as circular trays. Just like this one right here. Now this SVG file right here
at the top left hand corner, this is actually the
one that I'll be using for today's project, so let's hop over to Cricut Design Space, and let's make some magic happen. All right, so here is our image right here on the Cricut Design Space canvas. Now, if you're not entirely sure how to go about downloading files from designbundles.net, and how to actually get those uploaded into Cricut Design Space, no worries, I have a video showing you
exactly how to do that, as well as fonts. I will link that video
for you right up here, as well as down in that
Description box below. But let's go ahead and
actually resize this. I'm actually gonna grab this little resize handle right here, and then just drag it outwards, just so we can get a
better look at it so far. And there we go. So first things first, what I'm noticing is that over here on the
right hand side of the page in this Layers panel, there is a bunch of
different layers going on, and especially since we're gonna
be using this as a stencil, we don't need all of this. So since this is already all selected, I'm gonna come down here towards the bottom right-hand
corner and select Weld, and Weld is basically fusing or merging all those layers
into one solid layer, or in this case, like one
solid image, so to speak. So here is our stencil. Now here's one thing
that we do need to add, and right here it says love, and you can put in a kid's name, or grandkids names, or family's last name, or however you want to do it. I'm actually gonna come over here to the left hand side of
the page and click on Text. And I think I'm gonna
make this for my nephew, so I'm gonna type in here
Hayden, and there we go. Now I'm not loving the style of this font, so I'm gonna come up here
towards the top left hand corner, right up here where it says Font, this little drop down menu, and I'm gonna come right
over here and select System, because System is the system fonts, it's the font that you already own, and that are already
downloaded to your computer, so I'm gonna select that. And I want to do a search for Christmas, and I'm looking for Christmas Blessings, which is right here. Now I did get this font
from fontbundles.net, so if you want to check that out, I will leave a link for that down in the Description box below as well. But as far as like the way that this font is actually kind of spread out, there's all these little
gaps between each letter, that is one of the
biggest pet peeves I have about fonts with Cricut Design Space. Now the way to fix that, in my opinion, the best way to fix that, is just by coming up here towards
the top right-hand corner, while that font, or while
that word is selected, and I'm gonna select UnGroup, and whenever you do that, it's basically ungrouping
each of those letters onto its own layer. So you could really just grab each letter, move it anywhere you want on the canvas, you could resize it individually,
you could rotate it, you could really do any of that, but I'm actually just gonna scoot this in a little bit closer, so it's actually connecting
with the other letters. Now you could we just use like the letter spacing tool
that's already built into Cricut Design Space,
but that's so hit or miss. Sometimes it works out great,
and sometimes it doesn't. And to me, this is just way more reliable. There we go. So now that we have that all connected, since it is a script font, and since those letters are
like overlapping each other, I'm gonna go ahead and
just select all of these, and then come down here towards
the bottom right-hand corner and select Weld. And I can go ahead and just
grab this little resize handle, drag that outwards, like so. Maybe rotate it just a hair. And this line right here is
kind of getting in the way, so let me actually just select our design, and then come down here towards
the bottom right hand corner and select Contour. And contour is a really great
tool that we can actually use to basically remove
different parts of an image, and maybe customize them
just a little bit more. So as you can see here, here
is our image like all laid out, and everything is kind of
like a darker gray color. However if I select this
little line right here, it's gonna turn into like a lighter gray, which means that it has
been removed from our image. So if we select anywhere outside of this little hide contour box, it's now removed from our image. Pretty cool, right? All right, so I'm really
liking how that's looking, I think that looks great. So let me go ahead and
click and drag over our, over our name, over Hayden,
and over this design, and then come down here towards the bottom right-hand corner, and we're just gonna go ahead
and weld it all together. So it's one solid image, one solid design. So now what we need to do
is actually just resize this to fit onto our cutting board, or tray, or whatever you're wanting to use. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab that now. Let me just throw in here one more thing about the wood you pick out. Whatever you pick out, if it's not completely
smooth to the touch, if it has any kind of
texture or tooth to it, you really want to sand this down with like a 220 fine grit sandpaper, just until it's extremely,
extremely smooth to the touch, otherwise you really run the risk of your design bleeding out into other areas of
your wood, and trust me, I've been there and done that
way too many times to count, and you do not want that to happen to you. But as far as measuring this
for our template so to speak, I'm actually just gonna go ahead and start the measurement right here, below the little hole right
here in our cutting board. So from here to here,
and from here to here. Basically, I don't want my design to be going past this
little hole right here in the cutting board. All right, so we're looking at right at 15 inches for the width. And as for the height in this situation, it is right at 10 and
three quarters of an inch, so I'm gonna plug those numbers
into Cricut Design Space in the form of a template,
and we'll go from there. So for that template, I'm coming over here to the
left-hand side of the page, and clicking on Shapes, and
I'm gonna open up a square. There we go. And if you want to change the color, just to represent the color
of the cutting board, you can. You don't have to, but
that's super easy to do, by clicking this little, this little color swatch up here, and then just changing that to brown. But let me come over here
to where it says Size, and the first thing I'm gonna do is unlock this little padlock, so that I can have a different measurement for the width and the height. And for that width, we said 15 inches, so I'm gonna put in here 15,
and hit Enter for 15 inches. And for that height, we said 10 and three quarters of an inch, so I'm gonna put in here
at 10.75, hit Enter, and there we go. And I can right click our template here, and then select Send to Back. There we go. All right, so now I know exactly how big I can make my design
without it being too big. So I'm gonna go ahead and grab this little
resize handle right here, and then just drag this
outwards, just like so. All right, so I mean, that's
actually pretty perfect, so I can go ahead and
grab our template here, and then go ahead and
just delete that out, and then I can come up here towards the top right-hand
corner and select Make It. All right, so here's the thing, the cutting board that I'm using is a tad on the larger side, and because of that, for the design to be as big as I want it to
be on the cutting board, well, it also needs to
be on the larger side. Because of that, I'm
gonna have to actually use a larger cutting mat. Now I have done videos in the past where I've actually sliced the images, to where you can actually create a larger than mat surface, essentially. However, I do not want to
do that whenever it comes to doing a stencil, because
there's too much risk of your design bleeding
underneath of the stencil, or underneath of the vinyl in this case. Whenever you're trying
to match up two pieces of a stencil together, just,
to me it's just not worth it, so if you don't have a 12
inch by 24 inch cutting mat, then you may want to do a smaller design. And since this is gonna be a stencil, I'm actually gonna just
click and drag our design, right here on this mat preview screen, just right here away from the
edges of this cutting mat, just so we have a little
bit more of a margin around our stencil. All right, so I'm going
to now come down here towards the bottom right-hand
corner and select Continue. All right, so for our base
material cut settings, so I am gonna be using the StarCraft HD permanent adhesive vinyl. This stuff is my favorite, it has quickly become my go-to, and to me there's just not
another permanent adhesive vinyl out there that is this level of quality, and that also cuts and weeds so easily, and not to mention it's
so, so, so affordable, like a five foot roll of this stuff? A five foot roll is $2.85. That's bonkers, you guys. Like, I'm not about to
call any company out, but just try to go to a retail store, and try to buy a five foot roll of a permanent adhesive
vinyl that is $2.85. It's not gonna happen. Not unless it is just
severely, severely clearanced. But for this, for my cut
setting for the StarCraft HD, I'm actually gonna come over here, and select Browse All Materials, and if you are using a Cricut Explore, just turn your dial over to Custom, and then all of this
should pop up for you. And per usual, I'm gonna
do a search for premium, and I'm gonna select the Premium
Vinyl setting right there. And as always, remember, if you're using a brand
new type of material, always, always, always do test cuts first. A small test cut, bring a star or other shape onto your canvas, resize it down to half an inch, and then proceed to actually go through, and cut it out, and weed it out, and make sure that it cut properly before you commit to doing
a large design like this. All right, so now for our solution, or mixture, or concoction, that's gonna make all of this Cricut Christmas magic happen. We're obviously gonna
need a few ingredients. And like I said before, I am gonna be using this
Thick-It right here, however, there are
other options that work, because I know that this, this jug right here was like close to $20. Now I do think that any
food or beverage thickener should do the exact same thing, and I'm really, really curious
to see if cornstarch works. So if anyone wants to try that
out and report back to me, I would love to hear it. Now in the past on my videos, I've always said around
five to six teaspoons of the Thick-It right here, however I'm gonna do around eight, and I've recently been trying this out, and it seems like it works even better, so I'm just going for it, you guys. (upbeat music) And we're also gonna use one tablespoon of this ammonium chloride right here. Now I have been asked so many times if this is all food safe,
and here's the thing, if you are applying it to
a natural wood surface, like I am today, like
with my cutting board, then absolutely yes,
because here's the thing, this ammonium chloride,
it's actually gonna burn into the wood itself, you're
gonna wash off that wood, so any remaining residue
of that ammonium chloride is gonna be washed away and gone, and it will absolutely be food safe. However, if you're using
another type of stain, or anything else in addition to this, then that opens up a
whole nother can of worms, and then you just need to do your research to see if whatever you're
using is food safe, but as far as this being applied to like a natural wood like
we're using, then absolutely. And then last but definitely not least, we're gonna need half a cup of warm water. You just want to give this
a really, really good stir, and then let it sit
for a good little while before you actually use it. You want to let it sit for at
least a good 10 minutes or so, so it can really absorb all that water, and become like this
thick gel-like texture. All right, so to prevent any damage from happening to our material, what I like to do instead
of peeling my material, or in this case vinyl off my mat directly, I like to flip my mat over, and peel my mat away from
the vinyl or material. All right, so I'm gonna go
ahead and just grab my scissors, and then trim off the excess part of vinyl that doesn't have any
designs cut out onto it, and we can save that for future projects. And I'm gonna go ahead and
grab my Pin Pen weeding tool, which is this little guy right here. Literally, I don't think I could weed out anything without this. It's that good. All right, so whenever
we're weeding out vinyl that we're gonna be using as a stencil, you kind of have to think in reverse. So basically you have
to weed out everything that you would normally leave behind. It's kind of trippy at first, but you'll get the hang of
it real quick, I promise. All right, so here is our
design all weeded out, so now what I'm gonna do is
just grab some transfer tape, and I forgot to mention this earlier, but you're gonna need some transfer tape, and this is my all time favorite. This is the medium tack transfer tape. This stuff might as well be witchcraft, because I don't know how they
made it, but it's perfect. Like perfect, perfect, perfect. I'm gonna leave my
transport tape sitting out on my desk with the sticky side facing up, and I'm actually gonna
flip my design like so, and apply this face down
onto the transfer tape. (upbeat music) And I'm gonna grab my little
squeegee tool right here, and then just burnish this really good down to the transfer tape. All right, so now I'm
gonna flip this all over, and then peel the backing
paper away from the vinyl. All right, and now I'm going
to very carefully apply this down to our cutting board. And I'm yet again
grabbing my squeegee tool, and I'm just gonna burnish
this down really good to the wooden cutting board. And now very carefully
I'm gonna start pulling the transfer tape off, making
sure that none of the vinyl is wanting to come back up with it. I find that if you try to
pull the transfer tape back as close down to the surface as possible, it really helps make sure that any of that vinyl sticks down to the surface. (upbeat music) All right, so now that that is all applied down to our surface, I am gonna grab our solution right here, which at this point should
be pretty thickened up, and it is. So if you can see that here, very goopy. But, you really want to
just kind of wipe off any of the excess solution, or
gel, onto the side of the bowl. Not leaving a lot on your brush, and then just kind of
very, very lightly going across the entire surface. (upbeat music) So now that we've applied a very thin coat of our gel ammonium chloride solution, we're now gonna let this completely dry, and then once it is completely dry, we will very carefully
remove all of the vinyl from the surface. Then we'll take this outside, and that is very important
to take this outside. It doesn't seem like a lot of smoke is gonna be coming off of this, but apparently it's enough to set off every fire alarm in my house. Ask me how I know. But we will definitely
be taking this outside, and then applying our heat
gun out there to this. So whenever you're applying your heat gun to your wooden surface, you really want to make sure that you keep that heat gun just constantly
moving back and forth, up and down, side to
side, every which way, and the reason you want to do that is because if you hold your heat gun in one spot for too long, it can really start to burn the wood that's even around where our
ammonium chloride solution is, and that's just, that's just no bueno, no good, we do not want that. Another thing that is really
cool about this entire process is just how customizable it is, even as you're holding
heat to your surface. The longer that you hit
your design with the heat, the darker that it will turn. You could go completely black with this, or if you want more of
like a worn, rustic, kind of country vibe, you
could do that as well. (upbeat music) Now, if you all liked today's episode, or if you learned something new, it would honestly mean the world to me, and help me out so much here on YouTube, if you went ahead and
stamped that Like button, as well as dropped a comment down in that Comments section below. Also, while you're at it,
if you are new around here, and you're just trying to figure out how to use this dag-gone
Cricut cutting machine, well you may want to consider
stamping that Subscribe button and then ringing that little
bell for all the notifications, because I put out new Cricut tips, tricks, and tutorials every single week, and you do not want to miss
out on a single Cricut minute, especially during December, because like I said earlier, during December is the 12 days of Craftmas around here on this channel. So at this point in the video, you should have the entire holiday or Christmas themed phrase. So if you are in the US, go
ahead and text that into me at 502-878-7189. If you are outside of the
US, then email it to me at mcpgiveaways@gmail.com. Thank you all so, so, so much
for watching today's episode. It truly, truly, truly
means the world to me, and until next time, stay crafty. (upbeat music)
