15 Hacks That Will Turn a Cricut Beginner into a Cricut Pro

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I have an amazing video for you all. Today I

will

show you 15 tricks to

turn

any cricket

beginner

into a cricket professional, of course we have been creating with our cricket for years and years. Tanner is a veteran, he has over ten years under his belt creating with crickets and wanted to compile this list of things that would be awesome. so

beginner

s can watch and learn that way you can move a little faster to get even craftier without further ado let's go ahead and jump into the tricks the first thing I want to tell you is to organize your tools and blades.

Well, nothing is worse than a super messy craft room where it seems like nothing can be done and it's too messy to work on. A clear craft space equals a clear head for better crafting, so we all love this little storage cart we have. from our local Hobby Lobby if you guys want to know all about this and where to get it I'll link the video below to show you where to get it and in that video is the link too so definitely go watch that video but This storage cart was made basically for Cricut ladies and then on top we have a lot of our spare blades and things like that so they're really handy to have on hand and we keep all of our blades here so they're all in one place.

Before we had this system, they were spread out across our different machines and we were never able to find them when we needed them and this has really made our crafty habits much more concise and more time-friendly because we don't have to. Look for everything, everything is in one place, so definitely keep your tools and all your blades well organized. The next 1/2 of you trick is to always, always, always weed on your mat, it's an absolute game changer and sometimes I still see people not waiting on their mat and it breaks my heart Whenever you're ready to weed, simply take the material out of your machine and weed directly onto the mat, ok, start from one edge, peel it that way, whatever your weeding habits are. on the mat, it

will

change your life.

You will get used to not touching the sticky parts in order to preserve the stickiness of the mat, of course, and you will definitely get used to it and learn to love it. like a third arm and it really helps you be able to create it easier and not feel so overwhelmed especially for a beginner it's not fun when you're trying to weed a vial and you have it peeling off everywhere and you can't keep it on the surface of your ship because it's just not flat where you need it so just use the match to your advantage guys it's an awesome trick that I've used since day one and I love what I want next.

What you need to keep in mind, guys, is to make sure you do test cuts with new materials that you've never used before. Your Cricut machine or other Cricut top is a great investment. All the materials they buy are a big investment and they don't want them. to waste your time, your energy or your money, so definitely take out some new material like this basswood we have and make a test cut, just take out the blade of your knife and have it make a little circle just to make sure the fit and pressure you need. I have chosen and it works well with material that gets fuzzy, I mean foil cardstock and heat transfer vinyl.

Anything new that you've never cut before, better safe than sorry, make a small test cut in the corner that will waste minimal material and such. That way you know you will be successful whenever you do your big projects because nothing is worse than thinking you are choosing the right scenario and maybe you are, but for that particular material it just didn't work out very well and then you ruined all the material you bought and you wasted your time on it and we don't want that, so definitely, guys, always keep in mind to do test cuts, which is something I love to do when we're working on small scripts. sources and using a Cricut adhesive vinyl is for reversing weeding, so there are some rules when reversing weeding and you can only reverse weeding adhesive bottle.

Technically you're already weeding backwards HTV, but it's a great little trick to know when you have a very small bit. intricate lines and cuts in your design, it's actually very smart to think about going ahead and weeding in reverse and you guys are probably very confused about it and want to know what it is, but let me tell you especially if you're going to want to do it. start a business and start doing this and make money with your Cricut, then you will definitely want to learn how to reverse weed. We want to give them all the skills so that they can face all the different challenges and know how to overcome them, so that the more production processes and the more techniques they have under their belt, the faster and better they will be able to overcome the small obstacles that they will encounter throughout their lives. years of craftsmanship, so one of those you need to know is how.

To reverse weeds I have an amazing video, a very short and concise video that teaches you exactly how to reverse weeds. I'll link it below. It's a great process, it doesn't take much more time than regular weeding, and for some projects I think it's 100%. necessary. I have had a few projects where I have chosen not to reverse weeding. In fact, I have had failures with them, knowing that if I had taken the time to reverse weeding, successful projects would have resulted, so I will definitely learn how to do it in the link below for the video it is a great technique to keep in mind and The next tip I have for you, which is really crucial, especially when using paper products, is to be able to remove the material from the mat upside down so it sounds very confusing and I'll explain it here because what will happen if you peel off the paper this way. it will roll up on you, so we don't want that to happen, you don't need to take it off like this.

It will really ruin your project, so what we do is we

turn

our entire mat over. We call this going with gravity, so gravity is pulling us down right now, so what we're going to do instead of peeling our material off our mat. We're going to lift our mat out of a material, so when you do this, remove the mat and keep one hand on the material and just peel that off, flip the mat over and here, guys, you still have a perfectly straight piece. cardstock there's no curls or anything like that if you peel them this way so it's an amazing tip that we use and guys we practice it with every material whether it's an HTV or a regular adhesive vinyl we do it for each one material only, so this is great practice to master the next trick and go from a Cricut beginner to a Cricut pro.

It's knowing when and when not to use more and less pressure, so this is a design space question. a machine thing and what it is is that after you choose the material setting, there's a little switch, a little switch, a little drop down menu where you can select more or less pressure, now it's always constantly set to the default pressure, which which means that your blade's cutting pressure is at the default level, so what this means is that if you have a new machine with a new blade, you may not want to use a standard pressure because you could cut too deep with that super sharp blade. blade, that's why Cricut designed more and more pressure, so for a blade that is very, very new, very, very sharp, we recommend using less pressure that way the blade will lift up a little bit and it won't cut as deep because It is a very new leaf. and once your blade cuts a few times, you'll notice that it gets a little duller and doesn't cut as well, so you can go ahead and change that setting back to the default.

Now, this is something you should do every time you load another mat and select another material so you can go ahead and reselect it with each new design you're cutting, but we love using more pressure when we want to make more laughs with our Cricut sheets more. The opposite of needing less pressure for a very, very new blade, so after leaving it at the default pressure for a couple of weeks or months, depending on how you make it, if you see that your blade is getting a little duller, maybe it drags a little. the paper and not cutting it as cleanly as you would like, go ahead and change it to more pressure for your projects that way it will make the needle or fountain tip blade go in a little further and cut it a little bit better so you can spread the life of your blades depending on the configuration you choose and now we'll move into the design space and I'll show you how to do it and where it's located and once you have this in design. space guys, go ahead and just click "Create It" and then it will show my here, go ahead and click "Continue" and then we'll select our material.

Let's say we're using vinyl today and now guys, just below number one after selecting. your material you can see the default pressure right here well if you click on that drop down menu you can see more and you can see less so this is exactly what I'm talking about so depending on your sheet if your sheet is super new, give less. pressure if your blade is relatively old, apply more pressure if it seems to be cutting perfectly, leave it at the default and that's the way you guys can know how to change the pressure and get more life out of your Cricut blades and have less failures in the project.

Also, guys, the next tip I have for us is to cut the transfer tape when you put it on any rounded project, so if you put it on something like a mug or a Christmas ornament, anything that's rounded. You'll want to cut your transfer tape and I'll tell you why. Here is a failed image that we cropped and deleted incorrectly. This was one of our test cuts we had earlier this week, so we'll be using this. as a demonstration, of course, it's not finished, so, don't you know? Don't think this is what it's supposed to look like, but this is just for demonstration purposes, so here we have a roll of our masking paper transfer tape and this.

This guy's transfer tape is amazing, we love it. If you take anything away from this video, you get some masking paper transfer tape and what we're going to do is first cut this little tail so it's even and now. I'm going to go ahead and cut a piece that fits our piece here and these things are so cheap and so inexpensive that we got them off of Amazon and now guys are just going to leave this right there, okay, rub it in there, grab your tool of polishing you guys should know how to do this so if you don't I'll link to a wonderful video on how to work with a bottle of adhesive for beginners because I did it really quickly and that's because I'm just giving a demo today , so the nice thing about this is that whenever you put vinyl on a rounded surface, for some reason it likes to peel off and doesn't want to stay down and also a big problem is that the backing wants to overlap and then bunch up. and then make our vinyl project fail a little bit and we don't want that but before we put it on there our next tip is to always use isopropyl alcohol on your vinyl project so the reason we do this is because there's a lot of Dirt and oil from your fingertips can build up on cups like this and we want to make sure it's clean and ready for every bottle that goes on top because that's how we'll have great project success.

So what we're going to do is take a paper towel and then just center the movement to one side and this guy's is a cute little pump bottle that we found at Dollar Tree and it's just full of alcohol and take our towel of paper and we're going to give ourselves a couple pumps here on our paper towel with our little pump bottle and take this off, you can clean them all up if you want, because another tip, I'm full. One of the tips and tricks today, guys, is to make sure you pay attention to the way you drink your coffee or your tea or whatever, so I'm right-handed, so I hold them with my right hand, like thisI want my decal to be this way if that makes sense so we're going to place it on this side and another hat when they put the bottle on the cups is that the handle likes to go down and they don't know what the center is so if they have a little bottle of paint, you can put it right under that handle and it will be perfectly straight for you, so that's a great little trick too, so now we're going to bring back our vinyl and this is what we're going to do.

What I mean by cutting is we're going to take our scissors and we're going to come in here and we're going to make a slit, okay, we're going to go all over the place, they're making slits, you can be as aggressive as you are. you want and make as many slots as you want and it's also smart, like we did here, to be able to cut out the inside of your project just making sure, of course, not to touch any letters, numbers, images or anything like that. Now that it's lit, guys, it's going to do a better job here, so we're just going to put it here and this is too big for a mug and everything, don't you know this isn't meant to be? in a cup I'm just demonstrating the techniqueSo you can just put this down and see here's this great example of how this guy laid down beautifully and if this guy stirred now if he continued all over the place like he was supposed to and we laid him down.

See, right there, how it overlaps, it would wrinkle in your design and ruin our design, but it didn't happen that way because we have crumpled paper, so you see, there's another example right there of how we're doing this, how it overlaps like this exactly. why we used these little slits and masking paper transfer tape and now once you remove them they come out absolutely flawless guys it's just perfect it turned out exactly how we wanted and we have no regrets at all because it looks great. That's why we love making little slits in our masking paper transfer tape when we use them for rounded projects.

The next thing that is crucial to project success and being a Cricut pro is measuring your projects. Nothing is more heartbreaking. than not measuring your project or measuring it incorrectly, so what do I mean by that? If we try to put vinyl on a t-shirt, we have to size it according to the t-shirt and then after physically measuring our t-shirt, we can go and design the extension in design space and you know, change that size there, but if not We do it or maybe we just do it very quickly and guess a number, it could be too big or too small for the material we are using and the project we are using it on and that can be devastating, so make sure you pay attention and measure, measure, measure, it's very professional, it's very cost effective and you save time when you measure twice and cut once. with all your projects that will take you from beginner to pro faster than you can imagine if you don't make as many mistakes when sizing your projects, guys, number 10 is to make sure you label your scraps well, so what do I mean? so that's after we've finished cutting something and we only have a little bit of scrap left, label it.

In an ideal world, you would have two different vinyl scrap bins, one for the HTV and one for the adhesive bottle and sometimes not so much on the adhesive bottle. but with HTV it can be very complicated to know what there is aluminum foil there is Cricut brand there are different brands there is a spore flex there is Arnall everyday and there are iron-on lots there are so many different types of HDTV and I really don't want to confuse them and maybe You're thinking, well, okay, since I'm cutting it and while I'm throwing away the trash can, I know this is a normal iron, so I won't forget it, but in two.

Three months, when you need it again, you may not remember exactly what it is because they look very similar, so, especially on HTV, make sure you qualify on this. Shani saw the transfer paper where it won't matter as much and just get a marker and just write iron on, that's fine and that way everyone will know it's just normal ironing, if it was sport flex you could write sport flex it would be foil you could run the file whatever it is, just make sure you label your clippings and that way you won't waste any time, try to go through them and remember what they were or something, as long as you keep labeling them, they will be foolproof for you.

It's no secret that Cricket brand weeding tools are expensive. I think for a waiter, it's nine dollars and that can be quite expensive, especially with the amount we spend, we like to double ours when they break frequently, so it's a great idea to look for some weeding tool alternatives that don't be from cricket brands that you guys will really enjoy so that the The first one that we love to recommend is the peanut weeding tool. It's amazing, it has a 6:51 bottle and looks like a normal ink pen, but the tip is a little needle and it's great to wait.

This is an amazing product. it actually has a lifetime warranty so if you want to check this out I'll link it below and also guys we went to Harbor Freight. We have a full video on many weeding tools you need from Harbor Freight and I will link to it. below and we have featured them as well, this is a set of mini biting hooks and a test probe, and these guys were so cheap, the prices of these I think it was like $2 and he was like a dollar 50 or vice versa, I mean they're they're so cheap and they're stainless steel they're not going anywhere they're very reliable and they're great products so definitely when buying don't feel obligated to only buy Cricket brand weeding tools, get out and see what you can buy, see what suits your style best and see what you like best, but definitely don't feel obligated to buy cricket because there are many other great brands that work just as well, if not better, next I want to tell you all about fast mode, so if you've been here with us for a while, you know that I personally don't like fast mode, but that doesn't mean I don't want to tell you about it because I want everyone to.

Make your own choice on the fast mode so fast that you re-lock the dropdown menu with more and less pressure on the face of the designs. It's another little feature of the design space that you guys have the opportunity to take advantage of so quickly for cricket creators. Cricut explores air sinks for our two. I think having them is a way to make the cut go a little faster, so it puts the cricket into full gear and cuts it a little faster for you, and this can be great if you're in a hurry or if you're doing a project big, a big meeting like design, big, not very big but still intricate, can't help speed up that process;

However, we want to warn you because cricket is very smart to Give them quick mode, sometimes you don't really need to use it if you're using ladder cardstock, printer paper, vellum, tissue paper, something like that, don't use quick mode, just It's not worth shredding your material if there is a chance and your cricket does it. I didn't cut it correctly that's not to say I think cricket doesn't cut as concisely in quick mode, we just know that manufacturers will learn that it's easy to have flaws in craftsmanship if you use quick mode on the wrong material, so that everything is very thin, very fragile materials, you don't really want to use quick mode, so keep that in mind next time and now I'll switch you over to design space again and show you where quick mode can be found because I get a lot of questions, well I heard about this quick mode but I don't know where it is so guys I just want to let you know that it's actually after you load your mat so you will have already selected your material, selected your pressure settings if you want . to change it from the default value and then you load your madyun and now is when fast mode will be available.

I'll switch back to design space and show you how that happens in just a second, so here's your bottom space and you're not. Look at it now because it's a little bit hidden, but under the number two you can see the number three that says press Go and then there's a little switch for quick mode. Well, you can't click on it now because you haven't loaded it on your mat, so I'm going to live reload on this mat just like I showed you a second ago and look at the screen there, you can see the number two goes there, hides and then the number three is highlighted and now we can click here quickly. toggle mode so you can click on it, click off depending on what you want and right there is quick mode so it's after you load your material before you hit the flashing print cricket button so it's a great thing to keep in mind if you are interested in the fast way and another way you can go from beginner to professional is to always make sure you have frequently used materials in your craft space with extras, so what What I mean by that is let's say we use a lot of cardstock, so we have 200 pieces of a 120 pound car.

We looked at 200 pages here in the craft studio because we know we use it often. We know we use a ton of HTV and vinyl, so we purchased bulk rolls of six large 51 vinyls. Bulk rolls that we buy by the yard, five or ten yards and we put them away, it's not very professional to want to do a project especially for a client or for a family member something like that and you're left without a product or you think. you have it and you don't always keep a running list of things you need that way when you're out and about and you find a good deal or when you're on Amazon or when you go to bottle 651.

Know exactly what you need to buy so keep a list of things you need and have extra cardstock and your favorite vinyls and some extra weeding tools and more blade replacements and things like that while you're crafting and that'll keep things going really well. professional so you know that you can do almost any craft at any time and guys, I've said this before in another video, but I wanted to reiterate it again in this awesome trick video because I really think this is a trick if you want to be. You're a professional cricketer and you're just starting out, the best way to get there is by doing draws that you think you're bad at now, that doesn't necessarily mean that if you really know you don't like making cards, make a bunch of cards.

All of this means that if you feel like you're not comfortable yet with, say, removing HTV, then you need to make sure you remove a lot of HTV and do more HDTV projects incorporating them more into your crafting so you can master them. that skill and move on to the next one and the one you're having trouble with on the next one, that's how you're going to level up your creativity, level up your craftsmanship and become a Cricut pro, you guys definitely need to make sure that you are. . be well-rounded in your craft because, especially if you choose to build a business, and by the way, guys build a business by die-cutting, it's one of three free e-courses that we give you if you become an annual member of the creators who are going to Learn anyway, if you are trying to build a business and you want to be able to fulfill customer orders and be able to conquer any project, if you are asked to do it, you have to be willing and know how to do things like the other way around. weed, like how to make a great card, how to know how to put punctuation lines and layout space and things like that, you have to make sure that you're being thorough and doing projects, you feel uncomfortable doing one of my favorite quotes.

It's that you don't grow when you're comfortable and that's very true and it's something that I need to practice because I preach it all the time, but you really don't. A couple of years ago I was really afraid of working with resin and epoxy. I thought it was really difficult and difficult to make and now it is one of my favorite craft products to work with. I love working with resin and epoxy and that's just one example of something I've overcome and been kicked out of. my comfort zone and it's an amazing feeling, so guys, that will level you up more than anything, having the confidence knowing that you used to hate weeding heavy vehicles, but now you can move on to the next thing you want to be better at. on the next on the next and it's just a cool little circle to make sure you get better at crafting every day and last but not least, I can't believe this is trick number 15 and it seems small.

That should have put it at number two or something, but it's actually very important to make sure you take your time when placing the materials. For example, vinyl is particularly true for this statement, so let's say it has a large metal sun. Okay, if you have your vinyl and it's already been removed and you have your transfer tape there and you're just trying to see where it's supposed to go, there are a couple of tips that will really help you make sure you do it. correctly because in many cases you only have one chance to place your bottle and that can be very scaryNow that with the iron on it is easy to remove it from a shirt and put it back on to peel it off and put it on.

Put it down as many times as you want, but if you're putting, like I said, vinyl back on a metal Sun, it can be really tricky to get it right the first time, so a good tip is to maybe put it down. the floor is a little lower so you can go over it and make sure it is in the center, pinch the edges tight, pull the transfer tape flat, don't let it bend in the middle as far as you can. We don't really see if it's in the middle or not we like to pull it up and look at it and make sure it's in the center and then another thing we like to do is start in the middle so once you've got it and you block where Yeah, stick your finger right in the middle of your design and work your way out from the inside, but guys, with a couple of those tips and tricks, you'll have mastered laying down the vinyl and laying down the HTV and stuff like that, but keep going. .

Keep in mind that it may be trickier than you think to get your vinyl on a sign like that and be aware of that and make sure you know that once you put it up, if you don't like where it is, it's very difficult to remove the bottle. of something like a brushed metal sign, you basically have to remove all the vinyl and restart again with a different cut file and you know, because it usually doesn't work that way, so keep it there. Please note that it can be very very complicated, there were a lot of tricks guys.

I hope you all enjoyed them. I hope you are ready to level up your crafting and take some of these home and use them every day. Leave me. Know in the comments section below which ones you really enjoyed and which ones you will implement today. I hope you had a lot of fun learning all of these because I had a lot of fun teaching them, as always guys, give this video a thumbs up. and subscribe if you haven't already to see more amazing videos like this.Forget that if you want to be a part of our amazing creation community, check out the first link in the description below.

If you love videos like this, you'll love our membership and everything we have to offer. Thanks for watching guys, I'll see you in the next video bye