- Hello, everybody, my
name is Jennifer Maker. Today I am showing you how
to cut cardstock cutouts larger than the mat
like this big Baby Yoda on "The Great Maker Show & Tell." (cheerful music) So yesterday I made a baby blanket with a cute Baby Yoda on it,
and you all went nuts for it and told me about all the other ways that you wanted to make
more Baby Yodas (laughs), like giant cardstock cutouts. And you've been actually asking me how to do this for a while now. If you want to make other
characters really big, cute cardstock characters for the wall or even just standing
around are really popular for parties and kids' rooms especially things like
Disney and Marvel characters. The cool thing is that you
can totally cut this Baby Yoda or really any other large
character or other image on your Cricut cutting machine, even though the largest cutting mat that you can buy and use for the Cricut is the 12 by 24 inch size. You can do it even with a
12 by 12 size cutting mat, and I'm going to show you
the secret to doing it today. So for this larger-than-mat project, you're going to need some cardstock, really any size from 8
1/2 by 11, to 12 by 12, all the way up to 12 by 24 inches will work for this project,
though the bigger the paper, the less work for you, always good. The weight doesn't matter a lot. You can use 65, 80, or 110 pound, though the heavier weight the cardstock, the sturdier it will be. You also need a cutting mat, either the 12 by 12 standard size or the bigger 12 by 24 size. And you need some tape
and some spray adhesive and some tacky glue. And if you want to make a cardstock cutout lean against the wall or
even stand entirely by itself like Baby Yoda here,
you're also going to want a couple of sheets of foam core and a craft knife to cut it with. You cannot cut foam core on your Cricut because it's way too thick. You're also going to need a design that's appropriate for this technique, so one that is all or mostly solid with extra layers, like
Baby Yoda, works best. And there's a lot of character designs over on Cricut Design Space
that are perfect for this. So let's head on over there
at Cricut Design Space so I can show you where to find them, and then I'm going to show
you how to prepare a design for larger-than-mat
cutting on your Cricut. Your first step is to find an image for your large cardstock cutout. Here I am in Cricut Design Space, which is a excellent
place to look for images that are appropriate for
these big, large cutouts. I recommend you click on Images and search for what
you would like to make. Let's say you want to make a Mickey Mouse, so we can type in Mickey, and you'll probably get lots of images. Excellent, this one looks perfect. We'll click that and say Insert Images, and indeed this is perfect. If we look over here on the right, we can see all of the layers
and there's lots of layers, including a nice big black one that's going to be our base layer. This is exactly the kind of
image that works really well for this large cardstock cutout technique, and there's really quite a lot of these, and they're all ready to go and they're already layered for you so that you don't have
to do a lot of work. You will still have to prepare
them for the large size, but they're already in layers
and that makes it much easier. So, oh, there's also Marvel characters. There's some really cute ones. These things up here, these are not ideal for what we're doing, but
anything that's layered, like these would be fine. The Spider-Man would be fine. This Captain America is probably okay. Let me take a look at this one. If it's in layers, it's good, and it is in layers so this
would this would be okay. It's a lot of layers, but
that would be okay, actually, just a lot of layers. So this is the kind of
thing you're looking for. It doesn't have to be a character. It can be something else. It can be just an animal
or an inanimate object. Whatever it is, you're
just looking for layers, and in particular, you want
a big background layer. So in this one, we've got these layers here on the right, see these? This is the whole body, and
having that big background or the ability to make
that big background layer through things like welding
will make a big difference. So this is the kind of image
that you're looking for. You can of course upload
an SVG that you find. Just be careful of licensing
and that sort of thing. Now yesterday, I showed you
how I created the Baby Yoda, so let's remove these from our canvas and let's go find my Baby Yoda. I created Baby Yoda from a licensed Star Wars
image that you can buy if you would like to also make this. And here's my Baby Yoda
and you can get to him by going to jennifermaker.com/babyyoda. There's also a link in
this video description. Let's click on Customize. This is what you will see when
you go to the Baby Yoda file. Yesterday we made this
version in the hover carriage. Today I'm going to show
you how to do this version in a large larger-than-mat
size, so very, very big size. So let's first save this. I don't want to accidentally rewrite over everyone's (laughs) Baby Yoda image. So we're going to say
Baby Yoda, Larger Than Mat because that's what we're doing right now. And I will also save
this file that I prepare so that you can see how this
works when we're all done. So let's get rid of Baby
Yoda in his hover carriage, and we're going to focus on
Baby Yoda when he's walking. All right, now if you're
curious how I made this file because it doesn't start this way, please refer to my video from
yesterday on the baby blanket, and I showed you exactly
how I created this image starting from a really, a
basic black and white image and how I created layers
for it and everything. And this is useful because
if there's something that you really just want, and in fact, I'll show you what it looked like before. Go to Images and type in Yoda. See, this is what it looked
like before I modified it, so you can see it was lot different, and so this is what I started with, and I was able to create layers
and change things about it to make it look like Baby Yoda. So you can do this, too. Watch that video and you can learn how to create all of these different layers and modify things, and it's pretty cool. But you know, probably you're
going to find what you want already in Design Space ready to go. So we're going to start with
this image, and for step two, we're going to prepare
this image for cutting. Now I want to cut out Baby
Yoda much bigger than he is. Right now he is seven inches tall. I want him to be more like 20 inches tall, so I want to reduce the size of my canvas so I have more space, and there's two ways that we can resize things. So I can just click and
drag this resize handle in the lower right corner,
make him really big like this, or I can go up to the size
fields at the top of the screen and change his height there. So I can say 20 inches and
press Return on my keyboard and he resizes to 20 inches. Whichever one works for
you is totally fine. Now let's talk about
what size is best to do. Ultimately, you get to
decide what size you want and what you need it for,
but there are some things to keep in mind that will
make it more efficient. So if you're using the 12 by 12 mat, your largest size that you can cut on is 11 1/2 by 11 1/2, right? Now if you're using the 12 by 24, it's 11 1/2 by 23 1/2, so if you want to cut fewer pieces of paper, you
will keep your constraints within like those increments. So for example, this currently is 20 inch. This Baby Yoda is currently
20 inches tall by, guess I'll bring him down a little bit, by 30 inches wide, so right now, that's actually pretty
good because he will fit. It's very large, so it's a great size, and he will fit quite easily onto three of the 12 by 24 inch mats after I prepare him properly. So it's always something to keep in mind. We could go a little bit beyond. You'd just be doing a
little bit more work, right? So either stay within
your mat size increment, so like do it in increments
of 11 inches, for example. That's what I would recommend,
and right now this falls within increments of 11 inches. And we could even go a little bit taller. We could say do 22 inches like this, and I'll make this a little
smaller so we can see it better and turn off my grid. By the way, do you guys know
you can turn off your grid by clicking in the upper quad, right here where the rulers meet? If you click there, your grid turns off. All right, so here's our Baby Yoda, and we need to prepare him for cutting because if we try to cut right now, let's go ahead and try
it, let's click Make It, you get this image, project
incompatible, and it's so vague. It's like, "What, what do
you mean it's incompatible? "What's wrong, what did I do?" (laughs) It's kind of an alarming
message, and what it is is that it's too big,
it can't fit on a mat, and it doesn't say that, but
it's okay 'cause now you know. So we're going to change that. We're going to make this
so it does fit on the mat, and that is the secret to making
a large project like this. So because we know that, so this size fits within our 11 inch incremental
size of our mats, right? And so we got 22 inches on one side and about 33 on the other, so
that's actually really good. So if you're going to use a smaller mat, that means technically, like you could fit six mats
into this space, right? If you're going to use the
larger 12 by 24 inch mat, you could get three, one, two, three. Okay, so you have to look at your mats, decide what you're going to use. I have a 12 by 24 inch mat. However, not all of my paper is that big, so I'm going to use a variety,
but I'm going to start by slicing everything down
into my largest mat size, which is 12 by 24. So I am going to click on
Shapes and click on Square, and I'm going to create, I'm
going to drag this over here, and I'm going to create
a mat size for my mats. So I'm going to change its size to be 23 inches long, and I'm going to click this lock up here in the upper right up here so that I can change the
height and width independently, and I'm going to change
its width to be 11.5, which is the maximum for the mat. So now we have an 11.5 by
23 three inch rectangle, which is comparable to
the size of the mat. We can cut this size on
our mat, and if we hover, we put this over Baby Yoda, we can see that we can get like his left side. So if we had two more, we should be able to get
him completely in there. So I'm going to duplicate
this twice just like this, and I'm going to drag them
over and see if I can fit him within these three mats, and I can. So if you're using the smaller mat, you would just have the smaller size. You'd have six here, but three large mats will fit my big Baby
Yoda, so that's perfect. So now I need to get
these three mats aligned, and we're going to start
using them to slice. We're going to slice up Baby Yoda so that we can cut him
out because the trick here is to get him into pieces
that will fit on the mat and then cut him and
out, cut out his pieces and then put it back together. You basically you have to eyeball this. You may want to zoom in
so that you can see better whether they're, you
want them to just meet, just barely, just be side-by-side, no gap in the middle and no overlap. That is your goal here is to
get these three rectangles, and we can select all
three and go up to Align and do Align Top, there we go. So this looks really good,
so there's my three mats. So I'm going to duplicate
this and set it over here, and so now I have these two sets of mats. You might be wondering
why did I duplicate it? Because I had this lovely set of mats now, and I don't want to have
to like recreate it again. Now let's look at our
image and decide how, what we actually have to do here. So this is in layers just like the other images I showed you. We have a black layer,
oops, let's ungroup this. So you go up here to Ungroup. and we have a black layer,
which is too big for our mat, and that needs to be sliced. We have a brown layer, and
this brown layer is 9 by 16, so that would fit on
our 12 by 24 inch mat, so we don't have to slice that, unless, of course, we
don't have the bigger mat. The eyes would all fit and the ears fit, but Baby Yoda himself here is too big, so we have two layers here
that we need to make smaller, this green layer and this black layer. So we have over here two sets of mats, one for each of these layers
that we need to make smaller. I am going to move the
ears and the eyes down. I can select all those together and move them all down
so they're out of our way 'cause we don't have to
slice any of those objects. All right, there we go, so
we're just going to focus on the green layer and the black layer and getting those down
into mat size pieces. That's our goal, mat size pieces, and it's really not that difficult. So we're going to take our three
mats that we created earlier, and those are the three rectangles, and we're going to slide
them on top of Yoda. Well, under Yoda, that's fine. Just make sure that Yoda is completely within these three mats. Let's do the same thing
with these three over here. So I've selected all three and
I'm going to move them over so that Yoda is completely
within those three, and I'm going to move the
outline down a little bit. Now it's time to slice. So slicing is to remove
overlapping parts of two shapes to create a new shape,
and just two shapes, no more and no less. I'm going to zoom in a little
bit so you can see this better. So you can see our three mats here, so again, we want to
select just two elements, so I'm going to select the left mat, oops, the left mat and my green layer, and I want to click Slice. And I get slice results, which you can see over here on the right, and I'm going to delete the
ones that I do not want, which is the the gray matte
color and there's one below it. I can see it over here in layers. There's always three when you're done, and it's over here, and I
will bring it to the front so you can see it. It's great, it sliced right out of that. We don't want that one, we
get rid of that one, too. If you can't see it, you're not sure, you can just move this layer
around, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to stay
in position at this point. So let's do the same
thing with the middle mat. So we select a rectangle
and the green layer and we select Slice. Now we get rid of the
parts that we don't want. Let me click and drag on
this and remove this piece, and on the left, same thing. We select the rectangle and
we select the green layer and we click Slice, and
then we get rid of the parts that we don't want, which is these two. So now we're left with Baby Yoda sliced into three pieces
that will fit on our mat. You see, so we've got
10 inches by 18 inches, and 11.4 by 21.7, and 10.9 by 18.4. Now we can cut Baby Yoda's green layer. We do the same thing for
his black outline layer, identical, so we select the rectangle and the black layer
itself and we click Slice, and then we get rid of the
parts that were sliced out that we don't need, so that's
the gray layers, essentially. You can just click and delete those. Again, we select the two
layers that we want to slice and then click Slice, and then we delete the stuff that we don't want. And our last one, we slice it and delete it, there. Now let's make this a little smaller so you can see what
we're working with here. So we have these three sliced images for each of these two layers and then these extra layers down here, which were small enough. Now if we click Make It, we should not see that Project incompatible window and it should take us
right to our map previews. Let's see if it worked. Hooray, see, awesome, it totally worked. So now we can cut our Baby Yoda on the mat size that
we have, and that's it. That's really all you
have to do to prepare. There's nothing else, so if your image is a lot bigger than this,
you just need to make it so that it fits on your size mats. Remember for the smaller
standard size mat, your maximum cutting
size is 11 1/2 by 11 1/2, and on the large 12 by 24 inch mats, your maximum cutting
size is 11 1/2 by 23 1/2. So you have to make sure, of course, that you have paper that is this size. So just because you have a
cutting mat that's 12 by 24, you might not actually
have the paper that fits. Now I have green paper that is 12 by 24. I have one of Cricut's sampler packs. What I don't have, however, is black paper that's 12 by 24, so we're going to fix that now. I'm going to click on Cancel
and we're going to go back. So for this black layer to
fit on my 12 by 12 paper, we need to slice it
down into smaller sizes. So I am going to zoom in a bit so I can see this black layer better, and I want to create, just like before, I want to create
rectangles that fit my mat, so I'm going to click on
Shape, click on Square, and my Square will show up on this side. It's okay, we'll drag it over. And I want the square to
be my maximum cutting area for that size mat, which
is 11 1/2 by 11 1/2, and then I wanted to make a duplicate and then align them
just like I did before, but this time top to bottom. So let's align the side on the left and then zoom in to see, think it needs to be a little bit closer. We want to have 'em just meeting, not overlapping and not a gap in between. That looks good to me, so we're going to duplicate
these two two more times. Oh, wait, you can kind of
see that there's a gap there. I don't want that, I don't want any gap. Let's zoom in better so we can
see better what's going on. I don't see a gap there. If you're not sure if there's a gap, what you can do is select both of them and change the line type to
like something like Score, and you can see the score lines are right on top of each other, so that looks fine to me. All right, so that's good. So we're going to duplicate this twice, and we're going to want to center it right over our Yoda, our Yoda layers. Duplicate another time,
and the same thing, it goes right over the
layers just like this. Let's back out a little bit. And this one is also over the layers. Yes, so we've got these two, and let's make sure that
everything is aligned just to be absolutely sure that we're on top of the images. So Align, and we can align those right down the middle and then align these on the left. All right, there we go, all right. And now we do the same thing
as before, we slice them. So we just select this layer, these two layers, and we do Slice. Remember if you're having
a problem seeing Slice, it's because you have more
than one layer selected. I'm just going to go through
and slice everything, so I'm selecting the two layers and then just clicking Slice, and then we'll go back
through and delete everything. There we go, so we've sliced everything, so let's zoom in here and get rid of all the extra bits that we don't need. So that's going to be all, everything that's gray, we don't need, so let's just start,
that was black (laughs). Let's start deleting, delete. And then these gray layers, as well. There's always a third layer, and then if you can't find
it, just click and drag it so that you can get to what's below it. There we go. Now this black outline
should fit on 12 by 12 paper, so let's click Make
It, and indeed it does, which is great for us. So there we have all of our images on 12 by 12 paper ready to cut, so if you have a smaller size paper, this is a helpful thing. You can of course move
some of these elements to other pieces of the, into
other mats to save on paper. And so we have everything is in 12 by 12 except for our brown
layer and our green layer, so let's go ahead and cut everything out so you can see how this works. So click Continue, and
you can say OK up here, and just make sure that you're
cutting on the right material for what you want. Chances are you're just
going to want to use the medium cardstock setting, but if you have a heavier cardstock, you might want to do the
heavy cardstock setting or even glitter cardstock, which has more pressure
and will cut through twice. Step three, cut out your cardstock. Now cut out your cardstock on
the appropriately sized mats whether that's all 12 by 12
inch mats, 12 by 24 inch mats, or a combination of the two sizes. Here is a awesome tip. If you have a 12 by 24 mat but only 12 by 12 paper
or 8 1/2 by 11 paper, you can put two pieces
of paper side-by-side on your larger 12 by 24 inch mat and allow it to cut those
two pieces together. If your mat isn't super
sticky, you may want to tape the underside of the two
sheets of paper together before you place them on your mat. Now I was able to do it without taping, but taping is probably safer because it will prevent any
corners from sticking up as the mat moves through
the cutting machine, 'cause if your corners
stick up, it can snag. Step four, piece your
cutouts back together. Once all of your pieces
of cardstock are cut, make sure you know how to
put it all back together. I recommend you refer to the images on the Cricut Design Space
screen that you cut from to make sure you know
which pieces go where and in which orientation. After verifying you know
where all the pieces go in your cardstock cutout,
it's time to begin taping the layers that you broke
apart back together again. It's important that you
tape the pieces together on the backside of each layer. Again, refer to the screen
in Cricut Design Space to know which is the front and which is the back of your design. If you make Baby Yoda,
you'll need to tape together the black layer, the green
layer, and maybe the brown layer if you cut it out on two
pieces of paper like I did. Step five, attach your layers. With your layers put back together, you can now start attaching
your layers together. Start with the bottom
layer and work your way up. Use a thin layer of tacky glue
or permanent spray adhesive on the back of each subsequent
layer to attach them. If you make the Baby
Yoda, this is the order in which I attach them: green
layer, then the brown layer, then the black outline layer, and then the ears, and then the eyes and
the mouth and the nose. Step six, and this is optional. Add foam core and a stand. If you plan to just put your
cardstock cutout on a wall, you are likely all done,
but if you want him to lean against the wall
or even stand on his own, which is super cool, you
need to add a stiffer backing to him because cardstock
alone is not enough. It'll be super flexible
with just the cardstock. I recommend a foam core backing. To add a foam core board backing, place a foam core sheet
down on your work surface and then put your cardstock
cutout on top of the foam core. Align the cutout to the bottom edge of it. It's against the bottom edge
of your foam core board. Now trace your character cutout on the foam core with a pencil. Using a sharp craft knife,
cut along the inside of the pencil line so it's
just a little bit smaller than your cardstock cutout. Repeat with any additional
pieces of foam core as necessary. You might need two or three or even more depending on how big your image is. And then tape or glue all the
form core pieces together, and of course you need to attach your cardstock cutout to the foam core. I recommend spray adhesive so
you have a nice even coverage, but tacky glue is fine so
long as you keep it thin and don't glob it up in too many spots 'cause otherwise it can come
through and look kind of weird. Now if you'd like to
create an easel-like stand so your cardstock cutout
can stand on its own, cut a four-inch strip of foam core board that's about 80% of the
height of your cutout. Score a line about four
inches down on that strip, but do not cut all the way through. Then fold over that scored section. Now flip your cardstock cutout over with your foam core attached, of course. Align the bottom of your stand with the bottom of your cutout. Fold the scored section underneath, and then tape that scored section to the back of your cardstock cutout. Now just prop up your cardstock
cutout with that easel stand and it'll stand all by itself. And this is how it looks, and I thought it went
together really quite easily. It's a little bit big so
that can be a little awkward. You just going to want some
space to work, but otherwise, it was just like putting
together a really easy puzzle. It looks really good, and
what's cool about these is that you don't look at
them from just inches away. You're usually looking at
them from quite a ways away, and you can't see the
seam lines on the paper or any little imperfections where you didn't quite
get it lined up exactly. It looks actually very
good from the distance that you would normally view
something this large at, so don't worry about it if
it's not exactly perfect. So I hope you can see how
it's really quite possible to cut nearly any size image. Imagine all of the cool
things that you can make with this technique: decor for bedrooms, parties, holidays, you name it. Now if you're curious how to
cut vinyl really big like this, I have a whole tutorial on
how to cut large wall decals like this super-cute unicorn. You can get the details, the video, and the free unicorn file at jennifermaker.com/largewalldecal. Now if you have any
questions about how to make these super awesome
larger-than-mat cardstock cutouts, please just leave your
question below this video or ask over in our Facebook group at jennifermaker.com/cricutcrafters. You'll get the fastest response there. And don't forget that I
have a Cricut giveaway going on right now for the chance to win a Cricut cutting machine. Get all that the the giveaway details at jennifermaker.com/cricutgiveaway. And that's it for today. Tomorrow I'll be back to show you how to make decorative cake toppers for that special birthday or a party that's coming up. Remember, I'm always interested
in your project ideas. If you can tell me what you want to make, I can show you how to make it. Until next time, this is Jennifer Maker reminding you to craft a life you love. (cheerful music)
