FUN with vinyl

I'm back!  I've been busy with several projects in the works but none of them complete yet...UNTIL NOW.  This project uses Cricut Vinyl and was a lot of fun to make.  This is a gift for my daughter who loves...Loves...LOVES music.

I purchased the wood at Michael's (who knew wood was so expensive...).  The paint is Martha Stewart Paint.  And the vinyl is Black Cricut vinyl.  I set up the words in design space. Fortunately, I took a picture of it before I hit "go" to start cutting! I had grouped all the images together and thought they would stay that way on the cutting mat...NOPE!  The Cricut rearranged them to fit as many as possible on the page. (I love the approach to conserve materials but maybe there needs to be a "LEAVE AS IT IS" button so that it cuts exactly the way it's set up when necessary.)

Anyway, since I had taken a picture of it I was able to quickly and easily rearrange the words on the design space mat in the order I wanted.  Then I cut, weeded away what I didn't want to keep of the image, applied the transfer tape to pick up the image and then put it down on the wooden board. (It's 8x8.)

All-in-all, the process was pretty easy.  The words are sticking just fine without additional adhesive. If I see any problems with letters peeling, I'll investigate a "finishing spray" of sorts to make sure it stays on.
Two of the very detailed words were a pain to put down and actually the original ones were not looking good when applied.  I pulled those off and recut the ones that gave me trouble and applied them individually.  This worked great for the really detailed/small pieces.  But it was a little nerve racking getting it all lined up.  My suggestion would be to have "anchor" words that are not intricately cut and put them down in the first pass.  Then you have something on the wood to assist you when lining up the smaller more intricate words/images that you want to use.

I think part of the problem with the removal of the image from the transfer tape is that the tape is pretty sticky and the vinyl wanted to stick to it more than the wood.  I've used the transfer tape and vinyl on a different project (a poster) and the vinyl came off very easily.  So the difficulty appears to be related to the material being used. It wasn't impossible to do - it just took some time and patience.

I think the Cricut Explore is AWESOME!!!

Happy Crafting!  Go make something fun! :)