The Easy Way to Make a Stencil with your Cricut, Apply the Stencil, and Paint without Bleeds

Hello, my name is Chris and I'm from Daily Dose of DIY. My mission is to teach you how to conquer

your

cricket clipping machine so you can do great things. Today I'm going to show you how to

make

a vinyl

stencil

with

your

Cut and Paint a Sign at the end of this video, you'll have all my tips and tricks for

paint

ing a perfect sign every time, so to get started we'll need our vinyl

stencil

. I use Oracle stencil vinyl transfer paper which I use just clear adhesive paper that you can get at Walmart our favorite tools a board that you're going to stamp on our cutting mat some

paint

and a paintbrush and some Mod Podge and I'll link everything this next so you can see what I'm using next we'll go to design space so I can show you the easiest way to

make

and design a template let's go there okay I'll show you how to do this with SVG and you can upload it from the internet or design your own space in InDesign with your texts and more so you can use my free SVG.

I'll show you how to get it. Check out my website and of course I'll link to it below. I keep all my content free. SVG is in the library, so if you're not a member yet, it's free to join, just enter your name and email, hit subscribe and you'll get the password and link to get into the library, so once you have it , I just have to go into the resource library, so you have to enter my password real quick and then once I let you finish, my SVG files are all in alphabetical order, so the one I'm using today is called blessed without measure once you click the link if you are on a chrome browser you will see it download automatically at the bottom, if you don't have a chrome browser check your downloads folder look for the file name blessed beyond measure so once the download finishes, you can open it. m on a Mac, so it will unzip it automatically.

It is in a compressed file. If you're on a PC you may need to right click and then click extract all to get the SVG file and unzip it, so once it's unzipped you'll be able to see it in your downloads folder, it's ready to go. I can go ahead and close this. We'll go back to design space and click upload and then we want to upload the image and explore again. The file is called blessed beyond measure, so let's take a look. for our bees, find that file that ends in dot SVG, click on it, and then click open.

Here is our preview of that file. You can go ahead and assign tags to it if you want to remember how to find it. Click the Save button. We get this. successfully the vector image has been loaded so go ahead and click on it and then on the bottom right screen you will click on Insert Images and that will bring it into design space for us so this is what I want to do now in my template. the template we're going to review here first. I think I'm going to go to the layers menu on the right and that little eyeball that you see if you click on it will make the SVG that we just uploaded disappear from the canvas.

It's still loaded here and we can use it, but it gets it out of the way so we can see the rest of our design. To make a template, we'll simply zoom in on the shapes and select one. square I'm going to go to the top menu and change that color right here from that dark gray to blue. There's no reason to do that other than to err our template materials in blue, so it helps me see what we're doing especially. once we have the text, go to the bottom left of your square and click the unlock button.

This will allow us to stretch it and not keep it perfectly square. So what we want to do is I pre-measured my board and it's 11 inches long. it measures five and a half inches top and bottom hello, that's the word I was looking for so 11 inches long I'm going to be inches tall we want to make this rectangle the same size that your board will be. our template so we can go ahead and go to the top, if you see that in the middle of the menu bar at the top is where I am and where it says width size, we'll go ahead and change that to 11.00 and then Right here on the height, we'll change it to 5.5 and then press Enter to change our rectangle to 11 inches wide by 5 and a half inches tall, exactly the same size as our board now if we go back to the layers menu. which is on the right, we're going to click on that eyeball again so we can see our design, as you can see, it's coming behind that blue rectangle and we want it to be in front, so while it's still selected, we're going to go.

Let's go back to the top menu and we'll click where it says a range up here and we'll send it to the front and that will bring that design to the front, place it over your blue rectangle and then we'll select both so that I go to the top corner here, I press the left mouse key and I drag both to select them. I'm going to go back to the top where it says a line, click the down arrow and go to the bottom. to the bottom of that menu and center it perfectly, that will make the layout center on the template while everything is selected.

Our last step, we're going to go to the layers menu again, at the bottom you'll see the word. attach let's click attach now you'll see the letters change to just an outline everything is blue now except the black outline of the letters and that's perfect that's all you have to do it's ready to cut come here and click. the make it button will show you how everything lines up on the map so we can cut our vinyl and on our mat and then we're going to go ahead and place the vinyl on our cut mat and cut our Cricut so we can I can make this template, we needed that Our vinyl was 11 inches wide.

I need it to be about 6 inches long. I'm using an Oracle 813 math stencil film, it's my favorite brand, let's go ahead and remove the film from the cut. This is just the standard green Cricut cutting mat and then I line it up around the top left corner. Let's move it down. Let's turn on our Cricut machine. If you have a cricket maker you will choose a vinyl template from the menu in the design space, if you have a scan machine you will set the dial directly on your machine to vinyl or you can also go into custom settings and choose the vinyl template.

I think it fits the same when you're ready. I'm going to load the mat, paste them under the little tabs, press the upload button and then when the Go button starts cutting, paste it in and it will cut our template, okay, it's done cutting so I'm going to go ahead and click discharge. Button Mountain when we take our project off the mat, you want to make sure to always remember to turn it over and remove the mat from the project. This will help reduce the curvature. I'm going to throw my mat aside for now and lay out the paper.

Do it again now we are ready to read your template. I use the cricket hook in the tool kit. I'll link you below so you remember the rectangle we made that will be cut here, of course, it's hard, try stabbing it, yeah. That's why tools are useful, so there's a rectangle the same size as our board. I mean, on the first template, you take out the letters correctly, we wouldn't leave a hole where the letters are and we remember to leave the centers of the letters there. Usually once you start everything comes out nice and smooth, so make sure it's not like I said, don't catch it in the center of your letter and take it out too, so I take out the letters, leave the centers in and Of course, this is where we paint, so it's the opposite of making a vinyl decal, so now that we've made the stencils, we're ready to

apply

our transfer paper.

I use regular clear contact paper from Walmart, this is my trick for

apply

ing it. I started gently, which is sometimes painful, we go and pull one end and then we fold the paper back just for a small section and then we stick it to the end of what I want to transfer and then you can just use it. your hand or your scraping tool if you want this, but it's at the same time I'm removing the backing, I'm going to go down, okay, let's go at the same time, then I take the backing off, I'm going to go down in the center so it goes down nice and smooth like in one stroke and then once it's there you can go ahead and use your scraper tool and polish it really good since I lost the center of my a you see it's okay. here those centers can be complicated.

I think I'm going to go ahead and pick this up and see if I can put it back in there now yeah, it worked fine, so I can put it back in, it's there, scrape it up nicely. To make sure those pieces of vinyl stick to your transfer tape, here's the beauty of making your pennies the same size as your wood. We are ready to transfer them to our wood now as you can line them up and it will help you with your drafting. and everything will center automatically and that helps you keep everything straight, so I lay out the template the same way you transfer paper, start at one end and then we can line up the edges with our board to make sure it fits right. and straight and square now when you take the backing off here you want to go nice and slow and make sure all those bits go onto your transfer tape so I go a little bit at a time and then I smooth them out like the centers of the B .and things you want to make sure are still there there is a part that doesn't want to come loose there we go it seems like everything else is going to go get it we get to the end and it pretty much matches the size of our board then we polish again and what to make sure now of the stencil sticking to the board hand on our Chancellor, okay, let's go and then we start lifting up our transfer tape, we're going a little slow, there's a part that's glued on to make sure everything's going to work.

I'm sticking to the board right now there's that annoying a with my nail so I don't want to work you have one that's a problem I like to use my tool just take it off the tape and then hold it on the board while you lift the remove the tape I think it will going to need to be repositioned anyway let's see if we can remove the rest yeah okay I think that's good and it's not

easy

your templates there will be centered on your board and it will look beautiful now I'm going to give you some tips and tricks to paint it perfectly because we don't want the stencils to bleed and tear off the paint and we've come this far, we don't want it to look like shit now so my first tip is to seal your stencil. especially if you have rough or bumpy wood, you can do this with a background color, a paint, you can paint over your stencil first with the color you painted the background with and the main color of my background is teal, but I had others Two colors. to make it look worn, so that won't work for me or if you do something like dye the background, you don't want to put dye on top of it, but if you just have a solid color background, it would work to paint now the same color as your background, any paint, this will bleed nicely, blend into the background and seal your stencil like I said, if you used dye or have a multi colored background, just add my stuff over here, you'll want to use Mod Podge. as a sealer I use matte, this is what happens with Mod Podge, although you have to take another brush, you can't put it too thick or if you do, when you remove the stencil, the letters will appear too, if that makes sense, they will pull.

What you just painted for your lettering has everything you do in stencils, it just has to be thin, thin layers, okay, and when I say thin I mean very thin, I think you're probably scraping off the extra minds seeping into my hand . a messy craftsman I don't know about you but I'm pretty messy it's dripping all over my table yeah very very similar you can probably barely see this it's a translucent sealer you definitely don't want to see white or anything that builds up. above, you just want to do a very quick thin coat over the letters so it seals that way.

If there is any part of the stencil that doesn't sit flat against the wood it won't bleed when you paint so it's done quickly and since it's so thin it will dry in no time, you'll probably pause the video because I doubt you'll want to sit here and watch it happen. Mod Podge dries out, but it won't take any time. I promise I'll be back as soon as I'm ready. Okay, so we're back, this is dry now, it took two minutes, but we're ready to paint. I'm using coconut cream from treasurers next to the seat of course I'll link it below to give it a good shake it and mix it now just because we stamped our stencil doesn't mean you still want to come in and dab on a bunch of paint you still want to apply a pretty thin layer here and let it build up something else that I like.

If the paint, does it dry so incredibly fast? By the time you get from one end to the other, the first part will already be drying. Well, I have my cape spread out a little more. It's finishing drying. Here I'm going to give it. I give you my following tips to achieve a sensible result without peeling the base coat of paint and the first thing starts before even painting that base coat. You need your board to be clean.If you have sold a rock, that paint is not going to work. stick it really well and if your base coat doesn't stick to the board it will show up when you remove the stencil so use cheesecloth or a microfiber cloth or your fingers a microfiber cloth would be ideal but get that dust and dirt off and grease and oil from your finger, they are all fighting against you, get the base coat to stick, so with the cleaner you can start with the board, you can sand it lightly and very quickly to remove those oils and greases, grab a microfiber cloth .

Lower it to remove the solidus, then you'll start with a good place for the paint to adhere, so once the base coat of paint dries, you'll also want to give the base coat enough time to dry. once it is completely dry you can then place the stencil and then the last trick to keep the paint from peeling off is to remove the stencil, the wood grain usually goes very far with the board so the grain The grain of the wood goes in this direction for this stencil and most people would tear off the stencil that way because it's easier, but if you tear it off with the grain of the wood, the paint is more likely to peel off, so if you go against the grain of the wood the paint is less likely to peel off, does that make sense? so the grain of the wood goes in that direction.

I'm going to remove my template like that, we'll start from the bottom and start lifting in that direction. Once you've finished most of the background, you can use this selection. Another area to be careful with is digging into the wood, just try to get under the jig and peel it off enough that you can grab it if you pick at it. the wood, then you're going to leave a mark, so we're going to lift them up and take a look at our finished product, there you have it, our sign is done, as you can see, there's my camera, as you can see.

It's beautiful with no

bleeds

, these tips work almost every time to get a great painted sign. Stay tuned for my next video. I will show you how to frame signs if you want wood on the sign and I really appreciate that. Lots to watch this one if you're not already a member of the DIY tribe, hit the subscribe button. I'll teach you how to conquer your Cricut and make cool things like this.