My First Try At Vinyl
Sunday, August 16, 2009So, it all started with a project for my brother-in-law's youth room at his church in Arizona. He asked me to cut out their group's mission statement from vinyl so he could put it up on his wall. I, of course, had to try it out before I could just send them something that I wasn't sure how to work. So here's my little mini-project. This literally took me 20 minutes. NO JOKE! So here's the finished product:
Step 1: Set your machine to Speed 3; Pressure 3.
Step 2: Set your blade to 3 also. That's pretty easy to remember... all 3's. These settings will allow you to cut through the vinyl, but not through the backing.
Step 3: Peel off the surrounding vinyl, leaving only your letters. Don't forget to take out the middles of the "o" "e" "b", etc....
Step 4: Put masking tape over the letters to be transferred. As you can see here, I have used a Post-It not to sort of mask just the word I want. This is handy when you have letters of different words running together... mask the words one at a time (its easier for application).
Step 5: Make sure the masking tape is stuck really good to the vinyl letters. Use something to smooth it out.
Step 6: Peel the masking tape and vinyl letters away from the backing.
Step 7: Position the first word on the wall. In my case, this is the "base" word, upon which I will layer the other elements. Make sure its straight!
Step 8: Using something sturdy (this is a wooden tongue depresser... but a credit card would work, too), rub each individual letter really well. This is super important because this is what makes it stick to the wall! It will take some elbow grease, but will be worth it when you start pulling off the tape!
Step 9: Begin pulling off the masking tape. Go SLOW....If some of the vinyl starts to come off of the wall with the tape, just go back over it with the smoothing tool.
Step 10: Position the other elements and repeat the application process.
Annnndddd.... you're done!Now how easy and cool is that??!
1 Lovely Words
That's awesome! I really need to get my hands on a Cricut (I'm assuming that's how you made the letters). A friend of mine has "Welcome" in vinyl on her front door, and it looks great. I really want to try it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your thoughts! I'd love to hear from you!