The One Trick To Master Layering Vinyl

Hello everyone Tanner Bell, welcome back to my YouTube channel. In today's video we're going to go over one of my favorite things to

master

when working with a multi-layer

vinyl

project. This is something everyone should be able to have. that back pocket of their craft supplies so they can pull it out and use this

trick

when you have a very complex image, so anything that has more than two layers makes me a little frantic and I overanalyze it and it's a little bit more difficult. You know, light up those layers, so in today's video I'm going to show you the one

trick

that's going to set you up for success when doing a multi-layer

vinyl

project and this will apply if you're making three layers like we're going to do today, we have between 10 and 12 layers, depending on what you're doing, it's going to be a lot of fun, so let me share with you exactly what you need to do here in the Creators are going to learn SOT.

You can see we have an image of a raised bicycle. This is a picture of a three layer bike and there are different parts of this that could be very confusing to design, particularly the brown layers and things like that, so what do you want? What we do for this is we're going to add an image or a shape so that we have grass instead of having to try to align each of these layers now, if you haven't heard of the creators yet, you'll learn that this is our site of membership. That gives you access to over thousands of cut files, fonts, exclusive videos, courses and projects.

We have so many amazing things that were there so if you have any type of die cutting machine be sure to head over there and get a membership today at The first link below will give you instant access to start creating along with us and download some of our printable guides to help you on your creation journey, so we will click Download Now and download this creator. you're going to learn how to cut file and we're just going to upload it and you can see we're providing you with the PNG and SVG option now here, now we're going to jump into the Cricut design space and we're going to click on upload and we're going to select upload image now we're just going to drag and drop the SVG file now if you say Tanner, why do we use the SVG file over the PNG now with a multilayer image like we are working with the current PNG?

It only allows you to load one color, so it would be very confusing to be able to load that and do this project. If you upload your SVG, you can see that each layer is already organized, it's very useful and it's really awesome, so now let's do it. What we need to do is go ahead and size this for our little frame that we're putting it in, so we've sized our image to fit where we're applying it and now what we want to do is go ahead and choose a shape now for this you can choose any of the shapes, so I'm going to work with, let's work with a hexagon today.

I haven't taught this tutorial with the hexagon yet, so we're going to go ahead and take a hexagon and we're going to cut it just so it's somewhere that can be easily cut, so we're going to have this hexagon right here and what What we're going to do now is go ahead and duplicate it three times. You're going to need three hexagons for the three layers that you have, so let's go over here and just click on duplicate two and duplicate three, so now what we're going to do is take these hexagons and line them up exactly. with our little thing and here's a quick trick, if you can't line them up perfectly guess what you can do.

You can go ahead and select those three hexagons and you can go to arrange them and you can click there. Sorry, don't organize them. you want to go under Alon and you can go ahead and click Align Center, which allows you to not have to do any work for this, so you can zoom in and look at it and make sure it's perfectly centered, so now we can zoom out and this is what we're going to do, now we're going to go over and click on color sync, now we're going to assign each of our hexagons to one of our colors, so I'm going to drag this hexagon to gray, this hexagon to brown and this hexagon to blue, like this, now that we've been able to sync the color of our layers, we're going to go back to the layers and now we can click on our bike, so now we've highlighted our bike and we're going to click on group, so we're going to ungroup it .

Now that we've ungrouped it, you can see that each layer is its own independent layer, so now you want to highlight. the brown layer and now you want to hover over the brown hexagons and by clicking Shift you will be able to select the hexagons in the same way, now you have selected the brown layer and you have selected the brown hexagons, what you want to do. Now you want to go ahead and press attach now again, guys, if you haven't seen my video on the difference between group slot welding and attaching, you should watch that video.

I'll teach you a lot about how to

master

those different tools, but what I love about attaching is attaching, it comes with a paper clip, the clip allows it to be detached or reattached, it's not permanent, like soldering or bundling , so make sure you watch that video, especially if you're a Cricut beginner and guys, I hope you did. in your notebook, take some notes and this is a great tutorial to help you with your Cricut, so now we're going to select our second layer, which is the blue part of the bike, and again, while holding down the shift key, it's going to select the blue hexagon as it is now - go ahead and hit attach and just for reference guys the layers panel is there to help you see what's happening on the canvas and every time you see it highlighted and compared to a dark top grade . to these other layers that means they are selected so now continue on to the bottom right corner and select attach so now we have two of our layers attached and now you can continue with the last layer which is our brown or excuse us our gray and then again after selecting most of the bike by holding down the shift button you will now click on the last hexes that are not attached which is the gray hex so now you are ready and you can press attach to Now we have our three layers joined together and you can look at this, you can drag it and notice that the hexagon stays rotten in place and none of this will come apart, but how are you going to be able to line this up afterwards?

If you cut each layer, you will quickly be able to line up those hexagons perfectly and you will know exactly where the different pieces of the bike go without having to worry about anything else, so you can see them just for reference. for today's video and we'll leave it like this because you can save it and leave it here for future projects, so now we're going to select "make it" and now we're going to quickly cut each of these layers with vinyl and we can delete it so that we don't have to mirror nothing, but on each of these layers you can see that the hexagons are in the same place so we can quickly layer them, so now I'm going to select continue and We're going to connect to our Cricut machine and we're going to cut out each of these layers, we're going to select a bottle like our material and we'll apply a little more pressure and then we'll load each matte and start the cutting process.

Well, guys, we've been. We can clip our layers right here, so what we're going to do is start by taking our blue layer, which is our layer number two, and we're going to apply it to our base layer so you always know. you can do this, it's going to top your largest layer and it's your base layer, so you want to have this at the bottom, so let's build off of this so you know this is your background layer, so what you need You already know here, so we're going to take the second layer that would traditionally go on top and we're going to apply it with our transfer tape, so we're going to take the transfer tape and we're going to place it correctly. here, using the dowel method, when you're working with large pieces of transfer tape, it's very important that you know how to do this process and it really removes the air bubbles, so take that and now we can provide you with burnishing the finish and now they'll be able to peel off this backing, so we're going to lift this up and we're actually going to apply it to the mat.

Now remember guys, here's the beauty of it. you're just focusing on lining up your stock exactly in hexagons, so once it's perfect, you'll be able to light everything up and it can be placed perfectly just by lining up your two hexagons. and I like to use the hexagons because they give you some areas to check and take care of, so now you're going to provide this, now we're going to lift it up, turn it over and peel it. We will lift you off the mat and sit you on the side before doing this. I'm going to put our last layer down because we're going to use it here in a minute and now I like to polish it right here.

It goes a little bit more with gravity, so I like to do this step as well and now you can grab the backing and peel it off, so look at these two perfect layers, so we've peeled it off and what were you doing? it's using an art backing sheet from the largest layer that we've placed on the mat and then we have our last layer here and this right here just helps us stick our vinyl back to the mat because that would be a little bit tricky. so we're going to allow it to light up perfectly and again all we have to do is place our little hexagons right here and as you can see it was a little bit off so that's totally fine you'll be able to Place this up here and you can apply pressure to it so it stays on the mat and then you can go over it and if my head is in the frame, I'm so sorry, but that's the kind of part, you want to make sure you line it up so that once it's lined up there you can place it and as you can see, our entire project is on one backing sheet, so now we'll repeat the same process one last time above. so we just polish, polish, polish and once it's done, it's going to repeat this last step again, so now you can polish again.

I love to polish right here before peeling. I think it gives me the best results. and it's super awesome, so now we're going to be able to fill this and that was that bigger sheet or just go to the next one and like that, so you have it here now. Last but not least, we're going to take our pair of scissors and we're actually going to cut out our amazing little hexagon because as much as it helped and saved us for this project, we don't want it in our finished product, so right there, like our three little hexagons. you can set this aside to reuse the transfer tape later if you want and now we're going to bring it on board and we've already cleaned it with isopropyl alcohol and we're going to start over with that cue method. and just lay it out like this and this has taken a lot of the problems of doing a multi-layer project out of the equation, so now we can go ahead and polish again with a material or surface like this.

I rather like to go in with my own fingers and stuff like that because when you apply pressure when it's on a table, it just breaks because of the lips of the product, so now you'll be able to grab that transfer tape and start peeling. Put it back on and as you can see with that isopropyl alcohol you'll be able to notice a big difference in how the vinyl adheres to the surface and guys it's really that easy to master multi layer vinyl projects with this super. easy trick I mean, I can't believe how much it has saved me for complex projects, simple projects like this and so much more.

Be sure to leave us a comment and tell us exactly what you think, but I love how it turned out. Guys, think about this awesome vinyl hack. I bet you've learned something new to use with your die cutting machine. We love being able to give you the best tips and tricks to master your logging machine right here at Makers Go. Don't worry, if you're not already a member of our amazing membership community, be sure to visit the first link below which will give you your all-access pass to access this fall cut and over 1,400 other amazing cuts. fall images, as well as over 200 fonts for our annual members, access to our members-only Facebook community, and much more.

If you have any questions about this tutorial or any other, be sure to post a comment below or email us and we'll get it done. I'll call you again, thank you guys very much and see you next time, goodbye guys.