- In this Cricut tutorial for beginners, I am showing you how you can quickly and easily etch on glass
with the help of any Cricut cutting machine and
in the process we're making a super cute Christmas cookie plate. So let's get crafty. (upbeat music) (bell ring) 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 also just trying to figure out this doggone
Cricut cutting machine, well you may want to consider stamping
that Subscribe button and then ringing that little bell
for all of the notifications, because you do not want to miss out on a single Cricut minute. Now y'all, I'm so excited
for today's episode because we are diving into the
world of glass etching. And the thing is about glass
etching that most people don't realize just how
easy it is. Like this is so flipping simple. And once
you try it, I promise you, you will be obsessed.
Now here's the thing, as far as the set that we're
going to need to conjure up this Christmas Cricut magic.
Obviously, first of all, we're going to need a cutting machine. Now I'm using my Cricut
Maker because, let's be real, it's already sitting out here on the desk, but you can absolutely use a
Cricut Explore, a Cricut Joy, a Silhouette Cameo, a
Brother Scanning Cut, whatever cutting machine you have. As long as it can cut vinyl
or stencil film vinyl, and can actually work with SVG cut files, then you're good, you're golden. Next up, we're going to need a stencil film vinyl,
or even like a permanent adhesive vinyl, will work as well. And I'm actually using this
brand new stencil film vinyl from StarCraft. So this
is the Star Mask 900 stencil film vinyl. And I
actually had the opportunity from StarCraft to test this
out prior to it ever even launching, which I was just
so extremely grateful for. And to be honest with you
all, I love this stuff. It doesn't tunnel. It works amazingly. It cuts out like butter. It's
just all around a really, really great material. And
let's be honest, the color is just gorgeous as well.
Like I love this stuff. Next up, you're also obviously
going to need something to etch out our glass with,
and I'm actually using this Armour Etch glass
etching cream right here. Now this stuff is magic
you guys, and a little bit will last you a very, very long time. Like I've had this little jar
right here probably over a year and I've done my fair
share of glass etching while I'm at it. And here's the thing,
you do need to actually glob this onto the glass
that you're etching out, but do not throw away the
etching cream once you're done. Scrape it off and then
put it back in the jar and you can use it the
next go round as well. You're also going to need
something to apply this to glass with, right? And
I'm going to be using this little foam brush right
here. This actually came from the Dollar Tree. I actually
got a pretty good sized pack of these from the Dollar
Tree for a dollar. I mean, you can't beat that. What I also got from the Dollar Tree is a glass plate to etch out.
This glass plate right here, $1.00 from the Dollar Tree, y'all. This is so affordable all
the way around in our Cricut Crafting Community Facebook
group, what's actually been trending here lately
from one of our members. Her name is Dory. She actually
started this little trend of a random act of crafty
kindness, I believe is what she called it, where she
was just randomly surprising different people with like
a random act of kindness, which is amazing. And I think that this would be
a great thing to use for that a dollar for a plate,
wrap it up in cellophane, put some homemade cookies on
there and then drop it off at a neighbor's door. It's just all
around a great, great gift. We're also going to need some
gloves, some safety gloves like this right here. And
honestly, y'all, it would even be a really good idea to wear
some safety glasses as well. And last, but definitely not
least, we're going to need an SVG cut file. And I am
getting the SVG cut file that I'm using today for my
project from designbundles.net So let's hit over there real
quick and I'll show you which one I'm using. All right, so here we
are on designbundles.net, and this is the SVG cut file
that we are using today. So, as you can see right up
here, the normal retail price is normally $4.00 and it's
marked down half off to $2.00, which personally I think is a
pretty good deal considering how cute this SVG cut file is.
I mean, that is so adorable. The whole Christmas calories
don't count, especially etched onto a glass plate. I mean, it's perfect. Now let's actually head over
to Cricut Design Space and we'll get started making this
Cricut Christmas magic happen. All right, so as you can
see, I already have our image downloaded from
designbundles.net and uploaded into Cricut Design Space.
Now here's the thing, I do you not want you all
feeling overwhelmed if you are new to this entire Cricut
world, and you're not entirely sure how to download a
file, like an SVG file or heck for that matter, even a font file from designbundles.net or fontbundles.net, I got you covered. I actually
made a specific video that walks you through that
entire process on how to actually download those and
actually how to get those into Cricut Design Space. So I will link that video
for you right up here, as well as down in the
description box below. But as for this project
right now, let's take a look at this layers panel, over here at the right hand side of the page. Now there's a lot of layers going on here and especially since we
are creating a stencil, those layers are not needed. So, what I'm actually going
to do is make sure that this group is selected by coming
up here at the very top, selecting that, making sure
that everything is like a darker gray, make
sure it's all selected. And since that it is, I'm
going to come down here towards bottom right hand
corner and select weld and weld basically does
exactly what it says it's going to do. It's going
to weld or fuse or merge all of those layers into one single layer. However, it looks like we
ran into maybe a little bit of a hiccup and this is, it's
not super uncommon for this to happen whenever you weld things together. So, if we take a look
over here on our canvas, you can see that the "i",
the main portion of the "i", the body of the "i" is missing after we welded it all together. So, let me come up here towards
the top left-hand corner, click this little back arrow to undo that. And actually, what I want to
do is come down here towards the bottom left-hand
corner, I'm going to zoom in a little bit. I want to
make sure that this image, right here is selected and then
I'm going to come over here to the top right hand
corner and select UnGroup. So, what am I going to do
is try to select the body of this "i" and it looks
like this layer right here with the mittens is actually
in front of that layer. So, let's move that out
of the way. Let's click on the bottom of "i" like that.
And then just scoot that a little bit away from that
"r" and see if that helps. Let's go ahead and move the
mittens back into place. Let's make sure that all of
this is selected again and now let's come back down here
towards the bottom right hand corner and select weld. Alright, perfect. The reason that that happened
with weld and it's kind of sort of a glitch in Cricut
Design Space is anytime there are letters or elements
that are super, super close together, sometimes
even touching, something like that can happen. So if
that ever happens for you, just try to basically undo
weld, which you can do if it's, you know, shortly after
you weld and then just try to space out those
elements just a little bit. All right, so now what I'm
actually going to do is come over here to the
left hand side of the page and click on shapes because
y'all know I love my templates and I'm going to create a
doggone template because to me it's just the best
way to go about resizing, your image to fit perfectly
onto your surface. And if you take a look
right here at this plate, at the main portion or the
main base of this plate, I already measured this out
prior, and this is about six inches wide. So, that's
exactly the same size I'm going to create the
circle to be, to be a representation of this plate
right here. Right, so to change the size of this circle,
I'm going to come up here towards the top of the
canvas, right up here, where it says Size, I'm
gonna clear out the numbers right there next to the
width, I'm gonna put in here, '6', hit enter. And so that
little padlock basically locks in the proportions of
any image or element that's currently selected. It went
ahead and changed the height to be six inches as
well, which is perfect. That's exactly what we we are wanting. All right. So I'm
actually going to go ahead and right click this plate
and then select send it back. And I'm gonna go ahead and come
down here towards the bottom left hand corner, just zoom
out a little bit, just like so, we click our image and then
we can basically go about resizing this onto the base of our plate. And I'm basically gonna resize
that by grabbing this little recess handle right here at
the right-hand corner of that image, dragging inwards, just like so. All right, so I think that's
going to look pretty good, so we can go ahead and select
our template and then come up here towards the top
left-hand corner and select that little red X, and
then I'm gonna come up here towards the top right-hand
corner and select 'make it'. All right, so as we can see
here, here is our design now on our mat preview screen. Now
here's the thing, this design is going to be etched onto
our plate, but not on the top of the plate, where our
food will be sitting, but instead on the bottom of
the plate where we can actually see the design coming
through the plate itself. That's just going to be a
whole lot safer. You don't have to worry about anything
getting onto your cookies or food, or whatever you
want to put on here. So to do that though, we're actually
going to have to mirror or reverse our image. And
the way that we do that is by coming over here to the
left-hand side of the page and clicking on Mirror.
All right, so perfect. So as we can see, our image
is perfectly reversed, but here's the thing
too, wherever our image is located at on this mat,
that's also exactly where it's going to cut out onto
our actual cutting mat. We don't want our design to
be pushed up right against the edge of our stencil film
vinyl, do we? We want there to be a little bit of margin
or a little bit of space surrounding our design,
just to make sure that we don't get any of that glass
etching cream anywhere that we don't want it to be. So I'm actually going to click
on our design and then just drag that down here, just a
little bit more towards the center, just to make sure
that there's plenty of space covering the glass
plate around our design. That looks pretty good. So, let's go ahead and come
down here towards the bottom right-hand corner and
select Continue. All right, so whenever we're cutting out
to this stencil film vinyl, the actual cut setting for
this is just plain vinyl. I know a lot of times,
whenever I'm cutting out these StarCraft HD permanent
adhesive vinyl, I will make the cut setting on premium
vinyl. But for this, it's just plain Jane vinyl.
And we can just click on that right here and if you're
using a Cricut Explore device, just turn the dial over to
vinyl and you'll be good. (upbeat music) All right, so whenever
I'm removing any type of material from my cutting mat,
what I personally like to do is flip my mat over and peel
my mat away from the vinyl, instead of the other way
around. It just really helps to prevent any damage from
occurring to our material. All right, so now I'm going to
take my pin pen weeding tool, which is this right here. This is like the biggest game
changer with weeding out vinyl or HTV or whatever you're
using that I've ever used. Like, I love it, this
thing so, so, so, so much. Oh, also one more thing,
whenever you are weeding out a stencil, you have to
weed somewhat in reverse. What you would normally remove,
you have to leave behind and vice versa just because
it is a stencil and we have to think of it that way. (upbeat music) All right, so I just finished
weeding all this out, and this will prove that
literally any material, no matter what it is, will
always have its limit. It was pretty difficult trying
to weed out some of these super, super small details,
like the little microscopic pin sized dots for the
'i's and the buttons. I was finally able to do it.
It just took, it took a while and we'll see how that
actually holds up as we transfer it over to our
plate. But just keep in mind, whenever you are searching for
a design to put onto a plate or any type of surface,
really, always keep in mind the size of the image or the
size of the element inside of the image and how that's
actually going to work out once it's resized to
fit onto your surface. Just something that I honestly
did not even really think about until I dived in here
and started weeding it out, but you know what? You live and you learn. Now, one thing that I did
forget to mention earlier that I was going to be using
today, is some transfer tape and y'all, this is my favorite
transfer tape of all time. The medium tack transfer
tape, this stuff is literally like magic. So, so, so, so
good. By the way, literally everything that I use or
mention or anything will be listed and linked for you
all down in that description box below. I also go through
and see if I can find any promo codes for you guys.
And if I do, I will also list those down there with those
links. So check it out. It's down in that description box below. I'm gonna grab my little
squeegee tool and also just burnish this down as well. The
transfer tape right over top of our stencil. I'm gonna flip
our plate over and go ahead and just peel off the stencil
from the backing paper. And now I'm going to apply
this to the back of the plate. I'm just grabbing my squeegee
tool again, and I'm going to burnish down over top of
the stencil and transfer tape. All right, so now I'm
to peel up a corner of the transport tape and
then very, very slowly, very carefully pull
that off of our surface. We really just want to make
sure that no little speck or piece of vinyl or in this
case, stencil vinyl, is going to come up with the transfer tape. All right, so we have
our transfer tape off of our surface now, so now I'm just putting on some
gloves and we're going to go about actually applying the
Armour Etch to our surface. I'm going to go ahead and just
shake up this little bottle real quick. Mix it up really
good before we get started. I'm just going to dip in here,
and I really just want to blot this onto our surface.
You don't really want to do any kind of sweeping motions
because the last thing that you want to do is sweep up any
of this Armor Etching cream up underneath the stencil. (upbeat music) All right, so we now gonna
let that sit on there for about 15 minutes or so.
We'll scrape off the excess, put it back in our jar and then
we'll go and rinse this off. (upbeat music) (Christmas music) Now, if you liked today's
episode, or if you just learned something new, please let me
know by stamping that 'like' button, as well as dropping a
comment down in that comment section below. Both of
those things help me out tremendously here on YouTube.
And honestly, I just, I just can't thank you enough
while you're at it, if you're new around here, and you're
also just wanting to figure out how to best use your Cricut
cutting machine. Well, you may want to consider stamping
that Subscribe button and then (bell ring) ringing that little bell for
all of the notifications, because you do not want to
miss out on a single Cricut minute. I promise you that
also, if you want to be one of the first to know whenever
a brand new video goes live, or whenever I'm actually going
live on Facebook and heck, even being qualified or eligible
for exclusive giveaways, well, then you definitely want
to be a part of my texting community. It's super
quick. It's super easy and it's super free to join. All you have to do, is
just shoot me a text at 502-878-7189. You can
say, Hey, hi, how are you? You can say whatever you want
to say. As soon as you send out that text, you will
get an immediate auto-reply asking you to put in some
information, click on a little link, and basically
by doing that, you're putting your information into my phone, so I know who I'm talking to. Thank
you all so, so, so much for watching today's episode.
As always, I am so extremely grateful for each and every
single one of you all. And until next time, stay crafty. (upbeat music)
