Slicing Images and Cutting Vinyl on Cricut Explore Full Tutorial

hey guys it's Mei Mei and today I wanted to do a fun project for my kitchen now a lot of you probably know or some of you may know my husband has a YouTube channel called Vinnie's vittles and he does videos in my kitchen and so I thought this would be really cute to put in the background of his videos and I wanted to try out this technique that I've not really tried out not played with much I will tell you that I did some playing with it last night in the design space software and I think I have figured it out so I want to share it with you guys cuz I think it's super cute and I have to give credit to someone in some Facebook group that I'm a part of because I saw a picture of this and it was awesome it's not exactly what I have here but it's what sparked this so if you saw the thumbnail picture you know what we're going to make it's a tile and I am putting vinyl on it to show Vinny's vittles in the background of his video so let's get started the first thing I want to do is I want to do file new project which already have a new project open here I'm already on a blank page so it didn't do anything but just you know keep going the next thing I want to do is I want to come to this little box right here now let me back up for a second I am signed in to Cricut design space that's as far as I've gotten so far this little beauty box right here if I click it will give me a grid and I can see my grid mat and I want to use these lines in just a little bit I think they'll come in handy so I'm going to leave the grid on now we're going to insert images now what I'm trying to do is find something kitchen II I want something that looks you know like kitchen or spatulas or an apron or something and I'm going to put in spatula in my search engine because I did this last night and hopefully I can find the one I saw that I thought was so cute and I don't see it here so now I'm going to put in a spoon and this is just how I search I just want to show you like I am subscribed so I have the subscription and um I found with my slide I really really liked you know what it was this one and I know it has a plate with it but I'm going to show you what I'm gonna do to get rid of the plate because I don't need it so we're going to insert this into our new project I'm going to stretch this a little bit just because I like to work with things that are larger now I really like this guy right here but I don't care for the plate so I'm going to get rid of the plate the first thing I want to do is I want to ungroup this project the reason for that is I want to get rid of any layers that I can by simply grabbing them sliding them to the side and then Xing them out so I was able to get rid of all of the layers pretty much I can keep that gray layer and get rid of this layer here's why I want to keep the gray layer I just want an outline the cut so I'm good with that if I keep this layer I end up having a contour every one of these little bitty guys out and I don't want to do that so I'm going to get rid of the blue layer and keep the gray layer now just to make sure there's nothing else and also you can look right over here and see that we only have the cut layer left now I don't want this plate so I'm going to go right over here to contour and see how it turns it purple now I'm going to slide my cursor I want you to watch my cursor I'm going to slide it right over this line and when I do when I get to that line it changes colors now I click it by doing that I've selected it now all I have to do is pull my cursor out and click anywhere on the screen or you can click delete but I just click anywhere on the screen and so you can see now the plate is gone so that's using the contour function so I'm going to click out and now click back and by doing that I have just what I wanted the fork knife and spoon which is so super cute all right now what I'm going to do is I'm gonna put this in this corner and I'm going to stretch this guy out a little bit just to about here for now and then we can adjust it when we're completely done I just want it to be a little bigger so you can see what we're doing now the plan here is to split this guy in half but to also add a little flourish so it can have like a separation point so let me show you what we're going to do we're going to go to insert images and I'm going to insert several different images here I'm going to go up here to spoon and say instead of saying spoon I'm going to say craft and I'm going to click cartridges and I want the craft room cartridge well I should have done that the other way around click cartridge then car laughter okay so this is cricket crafting basics this is free for everybody everybody can get this this cartridge basically and so you don't have to have a subscription or anything so I'm going to click this rectangle that's good enough for me and I can see down here that the rectangle is here so if I didn't want that rectangle when I go to insert my images I can just click that red X and get rid of it but I want to carry it with me as I look for some other images now I want to find a flourish or some sort of design like that so I'm going to click in flourishes now I want to show you something see how it says no results found that's because I'm still in cartridges it's important that you learn this stuff and the reason is you make it a little frustrating to go I know there's flourishes on this well this is why we're still in cartridges I don't want to be in cartridges so I'm going to go right here and click all images and then type in flourishes so don't get frustrated that can happen um but you know you just got to know those little tips and tricks there so there we go so we're getting rid of a Rebecca we're looking for flourishes now and we still have our little rectangle down here waiting on us and now I'm going to find something I am looking for what I'm looking for is something that can be on the end of my line that I can also split in half won't make a lot of sense to you right now but once I put it into the in once I put it into the to the project and I do it it'll make more sense and you'll know what you're looking for when you come back for them I also don't want to pay for once I'm looking for ones that are in my subscription I am enjoying the subscription I think it has been really um really nice to be able to just come through and go through a whole bunch of images I'm going to look until I find one and if it takes me too long oh I like this one right here a lot I think we'll use that one alright so I'm going to insert these images now I'm going to move some stuff by the way so we can kind of see what we're doing I'll just slide this guy over here we'll get to him in a minute I'm going to go ahead and make a copy of this square and paste it and I'm going to sit it over here to the side I will need it after while I don't need it right now but I just don't want to have to keep going back to insert images by doing that I just have one when I need it now I want to take this and make a long skinny rectangle out of it and notice if I try to do it like this it moves everything together I don't want to do that I want to unlock it I'm going to shrink it up to less than an inch about like that and then I want to stretch it out now this piece is going to be my divider between my silverware pieces here so if you want to be very specific with your measurements you can use your grid for this this is why I wanted the grid I'm going to take this fork and put it on this 3-inch line and I'm only doing that to give myself a reference point that's really all I'm doing that for so I know it's on the 3-inch line and now I'm going to take this little line and center it between the two and a half and then nine and a half inch and I'm just eyeballing because that's just how I do things I think it's a little bit wide for me still some will shrink it down a little bit more and then bring it down now I want to grab this flourish and I need two of them so I'm going to go ahead actually I'm not going to I need two of them but I'm going to wait till I get it sized where I want it and then we can make a copy of it that way we only have to size at one time I'm going to turn it on its side to 90 degrees I'm going to bring it down now it will end up in this area but notice how it's over my spoon and way down here I need to shrink it so I'm going to grab this little arrow and shrink it down to a good size about like that and then we're going to bring it here to the end of this line now I like it there and I'm pretty happy with how that looks I think I need to move it down just a little bit I'm just basically centering it as best I can on that line and I'm using that little arrow to help me to or that little grid line to help me to so I like that I like the way that looks now I'm going to copy this I'm going to paste it and I'm going to bring it over here now I want to flip it around and this is how I do it I just grab this guy rotate it around because I just have a habit of doing that but you can you can also use um there's a flip button I'm not sure where it is right now I'll find that and show you guys at a later date but for now I'm just going to do it this way because that's just how I do it and for me it's a lot faster so now I have everything lined up like I want it the problem is these are all multiple pieces and I don't want multiple pieces I want it to be all one piece so now we need to start welding so I'm going to grab the fork and the spoon and the knife I'm going to hold my shift button and I'm going to grab this let's see going to get the line first got it I'm going to weld that together over here in the layers panel once it's welded you'll notice it turns the same color so now you know the spoon the knife and the fork is weld together but my flourishes are not so now I'm going to grab the utensils hold my shift and grab a flourish and I'm going to weld that together and now notice I need to grab this guy because you can see it's not one piece so I'll grab the utensils in one flourish and that guy and weld it together now that's just how I like to do it and now I have this really cute image but I want to split this in half so that I can put Vinny's vittles in the middle so that's why I saved this guy now I'm going to need another square in a few minutes so I'm going to go ahead and copy and paste that square so I don't have to go search for one and just move it over here out of my way all right it's time to split these guys and here's what we need to do we need to turn this rectangle into a tiny thin line and so I'm unlocking it and then I'm going to make it skinny and long and I'm going to make sure that it goes through the image all the way through you can make it as skinny as you want but it can't be flat it has to be has to have it has to be a line I just grabbed the wrong one so let me move that back grab this guy alright now we're going to move it up if I can get a hold of it well I keep getting the wrong thing let's try it again grab you here we go got it I'm going to move it up to the center portion of the flourishes I'm looking at this in and I'm looking at this end and I like how that looks so with this selected I'm going to hold down shift and grab the utensil so now basically I've grabbed everything I'm going to come to the side here and click slice now here's what's important you can only slice two images you can't slice more than two pieces so that's why it's important to weld all of your image together before you slice now check this out I can grab this piece and delete it because I don't need it anymore and now I can grab this little wide in the middle and delete it now although this looks like I have two separate pieces now I still don't because check this out they still are attached to each other and you can't just click unattach because there's not one so let me show you what you do this is where this square comes in you're going to grab this square I'm going to bring a rectangle I'm going to bring it over and I'm going to put it right in that little crack there that little crease and I'm going to stretch it out let me unlock it so it'll stretch just like I want it to and what I want you to do here is cover this entire area so I've got all the way to our separation now I'm going to hold down the shift key and click the utensil so I basically selected everything and I'm going to click slice again now this is going to slice it in half and I'll show you what it does I can now take this piece that I don't want see that and I can delete it and now I can grab this piece and I have a separation so check it out we just turn that into that cool little image I love that now what I want to do is take this guy and put it all the way to the top and it will create my separation between them and I want it to be about an inch and a half or two inches so I'm using my grid for this see I think something about luck let me go back up here I'm gonna put it back together for a second and I think I'm going to use my down arrow button to move it so I know it stays on the right the right place there and that inch and a quarter I'm gonna do something about like that now I want to scroll down here and look and see where I'm at okay I'm at the 11 inch Mart which is perfect that will cut for me on my cutting mat without any issues now I just want to put my wording inside of here so I will go right over here and add text and do that again and now I'm going to put in Vinny's vittles just like that and I want to change my font I don't care for this font so I'm going to change it the way I'm going to do that is to click on the edit button and I will select the font that I want and what was the font I like for this one I don't remember sometimes when you click fine it takes a little while if you have a lot of fonts I have to load like I have a lot on my system so they have to load it takes it a minute and sometimes you even click it twice before it works so this one I love this font so just switch it to that font and then I'm going to bring it to the middle here and I'm going to resize it and we'll unlock it first because I'm just going to resize this to fit inside of here and I don't want it touching anything I just want it as big as it can go in this section so I'm just going to stretch it as much as I can and to be honest this can come out it's not a big deal if this doesn't fit like if I stretch it out like this and then I'll bring it over because see I've got more width than I do height at this point and I can do it like this so now look how cute that is but there's a couple more things we need to do sure hang on let's do those all right I need to move that a little bit there we go now I want to grab this and I want to go to the layers and I want to see if this has any background on it and it doesn't notice that it's just the letters and it's a cut but I want to make these two I want to attach these together so I'll hold down my shift and click on that spoon to grab everything now notice I'm only grabbing the wording in the top and that's okay now I'm going to attach and now I need to grab this which is going to be the wording in the spoon hold down my shift and attach that bottom now everything will cut all together at one time and I won't have the fork spoon and knife cutting separate and this cutting separate it'll all be one image so let me show you let's go up here to go and look what we're going to get it's not cute now looking at this I'm noticing that I'm a little off-center here and I'm not sure why I'm going to go back and see what's causing that to happen so I'm going to X out of this and sure enough it is off-center so I'm going to move this guy over oh you know what it is it didn't attach let's try that again hold down the shift grab the top and attach there we go it just didn't attach while ago so let's go to go now it's right so you so always check before you cut look at your image here so now we're ready to take it to the Machine and cut it okay so before we're ready to cut I need to do a little bit of prep work and I thought I'd bring you along with me first is I have my map here I'm going to move it all the way for a second and show you this is the tile I'm going to put this on this is a twelve by twelve a porcelain tile and it is actually from my house whenever we built our house this is the floor in my kitchen it's actually the floor throughout my whole house so I thought it'd be cool to use this and it was just some leftover that we had so I'll move that out of the way you will want to make sure that your tile is you know nice and clean and doesn't have any dust or anything on it now the vinyl I'm going to use today is this cricket vinyl and it is some that I purchased at Tupelo designs llc.com they have or they had a few colors I don't know if they have any left but I bought this when they first got it in I got this and a brown one so we're going to use that today and it is the cricket version so and this is the it's just cricket vinyl it's not like an outdoor viable anything it's just cricket vinyl and I'm going to show you what I do to kind of prep so this piece I've already cut down to twelve by twelve inches and I'll bring my mouse over my mat is not extremely sticky and it needs to be washed and I've got a couple videos to do before I wash it but that is what needs to happen so now I'm going to put this vinyl on to my mat and what I like to do is just line it up at the top bring it down here to the bottom I've got it turned under on itself and then one thing I like to do before I put this into the machine is to rub out these air bubbles as much as I can and to even come back with my brayer first I use my hand because I'm trying not to wrinkle this or cause any issues but because this comes on a roll and it sits on that roll for so long it kind of gets trained too have these little bubble knees in it so for me it's important to do this I'm just going to rub them out and this piece right here I may even have to rub this all the way down to get rid of it like I have to rub it to the end of the piece but I'm willing to do that because I don't want any issues when I go to cut anybody else have to do this it was just just something I have to do but you see I'm able to move it out of my way kind of just keep rubbing it and rubbing it try not to crease it that's one thing I am trying not to do I did get a little crease there but I think it's going to be out of the way okay then I've got this one here I need to get rid of but usually you can get them out of the way usually then I brayer it feel like this helps with the air bubble situation so if you're having any issues this is what I do and I don't want to spending the time like I said I'm doing this for a project that's going to be something I have for a long long time so don't mind the time it takes to get that right but now it's ready to go into our machine okay so we are ready to cut so all I have to do here is press go now if you were putting this on a piece of glass you would you might need to mirror it for some reason like if you needed to put it behind the glass for it to show but I don't need to do that because I'm going to put it straight down another thing you might want to move this around a little bit just to kind of Center it because you know you have plenty of material on your mat before you go and then you'll just click go now I'm using my USB straight into my computer right now because my Bluetooth is still acting up I'm not stressed about it I just click this Explorer button with the USB beside it and I use the cord and it will load and then it will tell me that to load the material and then I can cut so I can press go on my machine and now we get to do the fun part you probably cannot see it but it is cut and I can see it now I want to tell you normally I'm not going to do it today because I don't want to take a chance of this because it's taken up most of the space but if I had a lot of wasted vinyl and I really only have a couple inches on either side I would take my scissors at this point and I would just come in a matter of fact I'll just do an edge and show you I would lift up one edge very carefully and then I would use my scissors and just cut that away because believe it or not I do some projects with some little tiny pieces of Honor and even if I have tiny pieces left I can utilize this in my scrap bin so I would come in and cut that away but I'm not gonna stress about that today because of time in the video so here's what we're going to do we're going to weed this now to weed it you peel off the top vinyl and usually it's pretty easy with the cricket brand but I want to tell you what I do I'll leave this on my cutting mat because it keeps it so stable so I just leave it there as I weed I peel up an edge and keeping it as flat as I can to the surface I slowly pull now here's something I want to tell you do not let this sticky vinyl get away from you and fall down on your piece that you're going to be putting on your object it is not pretty when that happens you cannot get it to come off because this vinyl sticks to itself very well see how slow I'm going and I'm keeping an eye on everything I'm I'm literally running my eye up and down and see how this is starting to catch I don't know if this is going to come off on its own it might need some help I'm gonna do a little lift on it I try to be very gentle here's my theory I know we all want to hurry and get these things done but I want this to last a long time so I don't mind taking a minute on this project to get it right because I do want it to last a really long time it doesn't take that long look how easy this comes off now I'm going to drop this over here and pick up from here but I'm keeping that extra off the side because I do not want it to come back on this vinyl because I'm telling you vinyl sticks to itself very well I learned that the hard way now get this out of the way now don't leave it on your work surface don't leave it where you can take a chance of it getting into something now I only have a couple of things to weed out not very much at all and I'm just going to use this little tool here that I have and I just kind of poke at those pieces and they come out pretty easy be careful though because you don't want to get into your good stuff to the good letter when we have two E's to weed look I lost a dot sure did I'm going to try to go back and find it what are the chances I can but I didn't see it happen and a lost it so I'm going to dig through and see if I can find it would you believe that I found it I mean that is unusual that never happens so always keep a good eye as you're weeding and don't let that happen to you because there was a good chance I wouldn't have found that but I did I got a couple of places in here to weed out if you're wondering what the term weaving is it just simply means to weed out the vinyl you're not going to need or that is not part of the image so that's what weaving is now this is a piece of cricket transfer tape it's actually from the you know the same brand this comes from the cricket front progra craft cricket and so here's what you do this is not my favorite transfer tape however it is less expensive than my favorite my favorite is the clear stuff but I like this one because it's cheaper and I also like this one because it has a grid on it now look I'm being real brave and I'm pulling this all the way down to the very very bottom and by doing that I get more control I don't take it all the way off that may be hard for you to see at this point to see how it's still attached for me that works easier and then I'm just going to lay this on top making sure I catch the top portion okay and we'll turn this sideways you can see what I'm fixing to do here and trying to keep air bubbles out I'm just going to rub this down and pull that away put that in the trash can now I probably am way too meticulous but now I go back to my brayer and I braid this down I just think it's better to be safe than sorry breaker breaker breaker even my boys know this step they're like oh you got a brayer it okay and now I'm ready to peel this away and I want to make sure that everything picks up if something doesn't pick up on my transfer I'll lay it right back down and brayer it again okay but I'm going to wait for a second because I need to get my tile up here ready to go and I can keep peeling it off the mat nice and slow good deal everything came with me no problem so now we just want to line this up onto our tile which might be easier for you guys to see that it's going to be for me to see because of my angle what I do is kind of put my transfer tape down I don't really press just in case I feel like I need to move anything but I'm feeling good about this one I feel like it looks good now I start in the middle and I rub out you can same process for any surface anytime I do it anyway and then I brayer it again I had this brayer for years and never used it until this until I got my Cricut and started doing vinyl and now I use it constantly so my brayer it grabbed my transfer tape and hold it flat to the surface and look that did not stick so I don't even keep going I just go right back and brayer again until it sticks if it doesn't stick rub it with your fingers press it in there good those little tongs did not want to stick so I just had to kind of force it but see how flat I'm even holding my hand down flat and I'm just slowly pulling if I have to help I will usually you don't but I think this tile is cool and it's probably not the best surface for this since I made it I'll know that and I will be gentle with it this is really lifting up on me and I think it's because I'm using this tile so once I get it off I'll be able to break it down real good so I'm just using this little tongue depressor that I have and just helping it to stick if you're using an outdoor vinyl I don't believe you run into this issue I really don't because this is not an outdoor vinyl and I'm doing it on kind of an outdoor surface so kind of be an unfair to the vinyl so don't want to blame the vinyl for this but see how I'm just taking my time anyway because I'm going to get it down there I'm just going to be slow with it then you might think that because I braided this down so firmly that that's the problem but I brayer all of my vinyl onto the transfer tape and I've never had this before I really honestly believe it's because I'm using a product that's not an outdoor product on an outdoor surface because once I press it it sticks it's just a matter of getting it in place see those did just find out there I'm glad let's doing it up there we're doing much better much better much better a little bit of lift right there I'll stick that back down a little bit of lift right there I'm still taking my time because I do not want to take a chance of it messing up by the way this vinyl is it's not white I can't remember the name of the color I'll look at it and let you know now sometimes you can reuse your transfer tape if you save your little piece for it because this is still sticky and you don't have to have it real sticky so just remember that sometimes you can reuse that transfer tape now I'm going to brayer again telling you i brayer brayer and brayer brayer my secret is brayer and that's what I do now I'm not going to coat this with anything or seal this with anything I'm just going to leave it just like this I want to feel how it feels make sure everything's down and that's it guys it seemed like a pretty good process didn't it I love it I think this is so cute I think Vince is really going to like this to be in the back of his videos so if you're not subscribed to Vinnie's videos go ahead and do that I'll leave a link below so you can go check his little cooking channel out and that way you can see this guy in the background of his videos love it I think it is precious thanks guys for joining me and I will see you next time for some more cricket fun talk to you soon bye-bye

Channel: Maymay Made It Crafts

Views: 250,065

Keywords: DIY, Tutorials, MaymayMadeIt, Maymay, Amy, maymaymadeit, crafts, start to finish, easy, how to

Id: ESRDIFPV_1Q

Length: 31min 33sec (1893 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2015