2022 UPDATED: ULTIMATE FLEX SEAL DOORMAT TUTORIAL 🤯

Hey everyone, welcome back to MAKERSGONALEARN YouTube channel and the 13 days of Halloween. In today's video, we are going to be making doormats and we're going to be making spooky doormats with flex seal And with the freezer paper, this is absolutely our favorite way to make doormats. It's super fast easy and comes out looking so beautiful. If you are new to our channel, we are a craft education channel where we bring you inspiration, motivation, and education along with our membership. Within our membership, you get access to thousands of cut files, hundreds of different fonts, and all of the education and videos and teaching materials that you need to get started and master your Cricut. Make sure you give this video a thumbs up, subscribe to our channel, and check us out over at MAKERSGONALEARN.com Now we're going to go ahead and jump right into our craft. We're going to head overhead and I'm going to show you all of the materials that you're going to need to get started with this project. Before we talk about all the materials, I really just wanted to show you guys the final product with this. So this was a design that I come up with using all different MAKERSGONALEARN cut files and fonts. However, we have put it all together for you into one cut file, but I'm still going to show you how you can manipulate this because you will have to manipulate it to be able to get this size and get all of these different elements on here. So this is going to be our final product. So what you're going to need to get to this point is we have a core doormat. Now you can get these at any home improvement store, Walmart, Hobby Lobby, a craft store, Amazon. You really can find them anywhere. Finding them at the cheapest price. Some places will run specials on them at different times. So just look around before you buy and make sure you're getting the best deal on these doormats. It's really good to stock up when they do have a good sale on these because these are great doormats to make. Change out with the season and even customize these and give these as gifts or sale. They're super easy to customize. Along with your doormat, you're going to need a Cricut Light Grip 12 by 24 inch mat. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be the Cricut brand. This is just what I have today. We just need a Light Grip 12 by 24 inch mat. Next up, you're going to need freezer paper. Now, it is important that we use the freezer paper because one side of this is plastic coated. So what we're going to do is we are going to cut this. We're going to turn the plastic coating upside down so the plastic coating is going to touch our doormat. And then we are going to come in with a Cricut mini press and we are going to just press that on and what happens is that plastic coating adheres, not a lot, but it adheres to this doormat enough to where we can come in with our Flex Seal and it gives us a great stencil to use with our Flex Seal. Now, if you've been around Makers Gonna Learn for a while, we used to use the dabbing method where you would just come in and dab this. Y'all, this spray Flex Seal is an absolute game changer. This is the best stuff when it comes to making the doormats. You can get them in different colors. However, we do, we have tested the different colors. It's a little more finicky to get those colors to work. The black is so clean, so precise, but just know that there are different colors other than black. But today we're just going to be using the black. Now, before we hop over in Design Space, one other thing you're going to need, you're going to need some type of measuring tape. So before we go into Design Space, we're going to measure the size of our doormat. You can also get the size measurement once you, when you buy it, but just for the sake of this, we're going to make sure this is a 30 by 18 doormat. So we know automatically because it is a 30 by 18 doormat that we're going to have to cut this up into two separate sections. The reason being is because our mat is only 12 inches long. So now I'm going to hop over into Design Space and I'm going to show you how to pull that file from Makers Gonna Learn into Design Space. We're going to manipulate it and put it together so that we can cut the two different pieces on our 12 by 24 mat, and then we will get ready to spray it. Now that we are here in Design Space, you can see I already have my guide or my square as 30 by 18. Now if you wanted to, you can change the operation of this and use it as a guide that way you don't have to hide it if you want to. Either way will work. We will use it as a guide right now. That way we don't have to go over here and hide it. So first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to head over to MakersGonnaLearn.com. As you can see, I've already gone to cut files. This cut file is named bat and bougie. So I've just searched the word bat and then if you scroll down you can find that here. So you are going to download that file, click it to unzip the file, and then we're going to head back over to Cricut Design Space. You will hit upload. As you can see, I've already uploaded, but I'm going to show you how to today. You will click upload image. You can either drag and drop your image here. Some people like doing that better than browsing. I'm the type of person I will go to browse and go to my downloads, my recent downloads, and open it. We're going to open it as an SVG because we are going to cut it today. And then we are going to upload that to our Design Space. From there, we're going to select it and add it to our canvas. Now this pulls up as 13 and about a half by 8. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm going to zoom out and place this within my guide. And then I'm going to scale it up to where I want it. Now, you can make it larger, smaller, however you want, whatever is going to fit. But now we're looking at this image. If you can see over here on the right hand side on our layers panel is too large to work with. So what we're going to do is we're going to separate this. I want this bat and bougie as one piece and the bats as another piece. So I am going to duplicate this in the same size and then I'm going to come down here to contour. So I'm going to contour out these bats to begin with and then that is going to give me just the bat and bougie. And here we can see that the words bat and bougie will fit within our parameters of that 12 by 24 mat. So we are good to go with that. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to click this. Now it would be easier. I'm gonna drag it down out of this guide. It might be easier to come over here and contour. However, there's a lot of things going on inside these letters. So one other way that you can kind of take this out or remove it from this whole piece is you can come over here to your shapes. I'm going to grab a square. It's going to pop up here. I'm going to bring it down and then I'm going to unlock it because I am going to size it here. Bring it out just a little bit and I'm going to cover the word all the words bat and bougie. Now you can do this from the beginning if you want to or you can duplicate it, contour it out. I'm just showing you two different methods. Some people's brains work differently. So I wanted to show all the ways that you can do this. From there, I'm going to select both and I'm going to slice that out. So now I'm going to delete this. We're going to leak the gray layer and now we have bat and bougie and the bats separate. Now if we look at this size, we have it fits within our 12 inches in width. We're at seven point around seven five but we have 28 inches in length, which is longer than our 24 inch mat. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to select our shapes again. I'm going to grab this box. We're going to bring it down, size it up, make sure it fits over those bats, select the bats, slice again, delete and delete. However, I don't want to move where they're at. I still like where they're at. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to select both of these and I'm just going to group them so that it doesn't move and I'm going to move it back up here and then I'm going to move my bat and bougie and place it back up here as well. Okay, so now we have our three different images. So I'm actually going to click this and I'm going to ungroup them real quick just to make sure that we're still good. So I'm going to select over here. We're working with eight inches by seven, fits perfectly on our mat. 14 by 5, perfect on our mat and then 11 and a half by 16 fits perfect on our mat. Now that our design is ready, we're going to go over here to make it. It is going to ask us if we're going to be cutting on the mat. Without the mat, we're going to select on the mat. We are using a 12 by 24 inch mat and then we're going to select continue. So this is going to put our bat and bougie together and then on this second mat, it is going to put the bats. Now I'm going to make, I'm going to pull this down away from that second set of bats just to be on the safe side so that I have more room to cut. So we're going to go here and then we are going to continue. Now, here is where I want you guys to really think we're going to prepare our mat. However, remember at the beginning of the video, I said that there were two sides to the freezer paper. There is a plastic coated side and then there was a non-plastic coated side. So we are going to cut this with the plastic coated side facing down because I don't want to have to go through the process of mirroring and everything else. So we are going to prepare our mat with the plastic or coated or the shiny side of the freezer paper facing down. That way when we pull it up, the plastic coated side is the one that is going to adhere to our mat so it will be ready to go. So as you can see, the freezer paper is going to be a little larger than your mat. That is fine. What we're going to do, the easiest way I have found, making sure all of the little bumps are out, I'm just going to lay this on to my mat and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to come back in with a true control knife and I am going to cut my freezer paper this way. We're just going to go ahead and cut it all the way across and then cut it down this way. Now if you are not comfortable using a true control knife on your mat, you can just come in with scissors. I just find it easier myself to use the true control knife. So that is why I like to use it. Now, don't throw this piece away. It's going to come in handy and I'll tell you why in a little bit. We're going to use it as kind of like a covering on our mat so that we don't get any overspray towards the top or the bottom when we are spraying our mat. One thing I am going to do is I'm going to bray this down really good. As you all can see, my light grip mat for some reason up here toward the top didn't have as much tack so this wasn't laying down. So I just grabbed some washi tape and you can tape that freezer paper down if that's happening to you. But we want to make sure that we bray this down really well. Now that we have our mat prepared, we are going to cut this on the freezer paper setting. Now if you are working with an Explore Series machine, you can cut this freezer paper on the parchment paper setting and it will be fine. The Explore Series doesn't have the freezer paper setting but you can use it on the parchment paper. So now we're just going to load our mat into our machine. While that is cutting, I'm going to put my Cricut mini press on a heat setting of 3 for this and I'm going to let that heat up. Now what we're going to do while it is still on the mat, we are just going to weed out the parts that we want to be black. Now what I'm going to do, now the insides of these letters and the ghost, they are not going to come up when I pull this up. That is okay because this is not, we don't have to use transfer tape. What would happen is the transfer tape would rip this all apart. So we're not actually going to be using transfer tape with this. We're just going to peel this up. The insides are going to stay on the mat. That is okay. I will show you how we're going to work with that here in just a second. But we're going to be very easy peeling this up because it does tear if you're not careful. So we're going to peel all of this up, leaving the insides of the letters on the mat and that is fine. We're going to set that aside for just a second and then we are going to position this on our mat. Now you can reference back to your design to see exactly where this is going to go. We know that one set of bats is going to go up here in the corner and the second set will go up here. So we can just go ahead, this is middle of the row and we're just going to go ahead and start taking our mini press and start pressing this down onto our mat. Now that we have the outer portion ironed down, we're going to come back in with our mat and we're going to grab these inner portions. And I really like using a set of needle nose pliers or needle needle nose needle nose tweezers and we're just going to pick each one individually up and set them down where they need to go and we can reposition them right before we press them. But just getting them where they need to go right now is the most important part. Now once those are down, I'm not going to press them just yet. I'm just going to move them to the side and then I'm going to prepare my mat again so that while I'm pressing this second half the insides of those down that our machine can be cutting our bats. So once again, we are going to just prepare our mat to cut our bats out. While that is cutting I'm going to come in here and press down these smaller pieces. So we're going to start each of these. One thing I want to make sure that you all know and understand is, yes, this freezer paper sticks to this mat good to the point where you can get a good clean line with your Flex Seal. However, it's not great. So just be aware that it's not going to stick. It still comes up pretty easy. But just don't try to get it to stick like perfect. You just want to make sure that it sticks enough to where it doesn't move and you can get that spray down. Okay, now that that's down, remember I said to hold on to your scrap pieces. This is where your scrap pieces are going to come in handy because we are going to use them to keep this overspray from spraying on the sides. Now if you want to use vinyl gloves for this, you can. You do not have to. I'm going to because it's very hard to get this Flex Seal off of fingernails. So if you want to use vinyl gloves, you can. But what we're gonna do, you're going to do this in a well-ventilated area. Our studio is very well-ventilated, so we are going, it's best if you do this outside. So what we're going to do, you're going to shake up your Flex Seal really, really well, and then you are going to come in here and you're just going to give some light sprays and the way your technique in spraying is very important. You don't want to, you want to get a good even coat, but you don't want to completely saturate the area. Once you feel like you have a good even coat, we're going to take away our overspray pieces. We're going to hang on to them because these will be useful here in just a minute. We're just going to lay them to the side and then we are going to take up our first stencil. You are going to want to be careful taking up that stencil because obviously that paint is still going to be wet, too. So just be very careful and we're just going to come in with our tweezers and pull up these middle pieces. Now what you're going to do is you're going to kind of move that over to the side. We're going to get our bats ready. So we have our first set of bats ends about right here. So we're going to remove the bats and then once again referring back to our design, the three bats are going to go on the top left corner and then the two bats are going to go on the top right corner. What we are going to do now, we are going to lay our bats down where they go. Now it's okay to just kind of lay your freezer paper over this that we've just sprayed. We're not obviously not going to iron that down. We're just going to iron down right here around our bats really well. And as you can see, I didn't do this. Some people will probably say, well why didn't you do it all at the same time? The reason being is because getting this situated and being able to spray and not have overspray everywhere else, this just tended to work better. So we're just literally just ironing down right around these bats and then we're going to do the same on the other side. Once again, just laying that freezer paper down easily and ironing just right around the bat so we get that good stencil. And then once you have done that, once again, I'm going to grab my piece of paper that I used to catch the overspray. We're just going to lay them both down here and here and we are going to start spraying. Now as you can see, this I'm spraying away from the edge. You don't want to spray toward the edge because there is a chance of getting that overspray on the edge and your work surface. So we're just going to be spraying away from our edge and then here we're once again going to spray away from our edge. And then I'm going to move to the other side and I feel like I have a pretty good protection of overspray here. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to turn this so that I can spray away. Turn this so that I can spray away from the edges. You also want to make sure that you protect your work surface. Obviously, you all know this is a very well-loved work surface here at Makers Gonna Learn. But the good part about this is we have done Flex Seal on this counter before and we've actually just come in with Dawn Power Wash and been able to clean it right off. So good thing. Once you have finished, we're going to pull up our overspray piece. Pull up our stencil. Toss it in the trash and then pull up our second set of batts. And then you are done. And there you have it. It's a super easy, super fun way to make a very customizable doormat. There are so many different things you can do with this. You can add names. You can have sayings. You can change out your doormats every single holiday. And with this Flex Seal paint, it tends to last a lot longer than acrylic paint. So I'm super impressed with the Flex Seal. It is our favorite way to make a customizable doormat. And I thank you guys for stopping by. Once again, if you are new to the Makers Gonna Learn channel, make sure to like this video, subscribe to our channel, and check us out at MakersGonnaLearn.com. Can't wait to see you guys in the next one. Bye!