Ultimate Cricut Print then Cut Training | Everything You Need To Master Print Then Cut In 2024

hey friends welcome back to the makers going to learn YouTube channel today we're going to be talking about print then cut print then cut is one of Cricket's features that allows you to make stickers in design space print them out and cut them on your own now it doesn't just include stickers it can include things like Printing and cutting images for cards and printing and cutting printable vinyl things like that but we're going to be covering all of the details in terms of what image types you need how to print them how to add offsets and all of that good stuff so if you're ready go ahead click the Subscribe button hit the little bell so you're notified every time we post a video and let's jump right into the video so as you can see we have already pulled in a couple images into design space I want to talk about the image tops before we get into any more details because it's important that you know which image tops are going to work for print then cut now you'll hear us talk about on the channel a lot SVG versus PNG and SVG is a scalable Vector graphic meaning I can stretch this image as big as I want I can scale it up and I'm not going to lose any of the quality the PNG is a portable Network graphic that means that it is basically a printable image but you can't scale it up as big as you need to now we're working with very small designs typically we're making stickers or crafts or things like that so we don't really have to worry about that part but when it comes to print then cut we typically use a PNG image I remember it like this PNG the P stands for principal now if you've got an SVG and that's the only thing that you have you're going to be able to actually turn this SVG into a printable image so that you can print it then cut it okay so let's just start there if you're trying to know the difference between a print and cut image versus an SVG image just upfront in design space you can see over here in the layers panel when I select my SVG I have four layers on this singular image that means that these are all separate images they're kind of grouped together to create One Singular image and then if I click my PNG you can see there's no layers underneath it meaning everything has been flattened together this image does not have layers it's completely flattened and it is ready to print we need to get our SVG to this point here it's very simple all you're going to need to do is make sure that you have all the layers selected on your SVG and then you can flatten it now if we wanted to print this out and make it into a sticker right now on either one of these images it's going to cut out around everything what you're going to want to do is add an offset to your image this is going to create a border and a background around your image and lets Cricket know that hey I want to cut this image entirely together but I need it to print out without but I need it to cut out without cutting each individual item shown so I'm going to come up here to offset and you can see when I select offset we get this line all the way around our image now you can move this offset up and down you can manually adjust it up here I'm just going to keep this at a point to 5 offset and then hit apply I'm going to change this to basic cut change it to White and then where we have all these little holes I'm going to Contour all of that out so you can hide all these Contours that's going to allow us to cut all the way around the image and not cut out any of those teeny tiny holes and then go off of it so now you can see where the black line is that is the only place it will want to cut as long as we flatten our image to our offset so you're going to want to select the offset and the design and flatten it now you're probably like where did the outline go what's happening how do I know where it's going to cut I'm going to select this little blank canvas down here and change the background color to a light gray that way you can really see where the image is going to cut so you can see right now this is the shape of our sticker that white outline and look in our layers panel there's only one layer for this now so that means it's not going to cut out anything except for around that white outline another fun thing about using svgs and then converting them to a print the cut is that when you're using an SVG you're going to be able to change the colors of the items in the design so okay so let's say we pulled in this SVG version of this now the beauty in having those separate layers is that you're going to have the ability to change the colors of the pieces of the design so let's say I wanted to just change my words I can come over here into the layers panel and I can select just the words and then come up here and I can change the color to whatever my heart desires and then if I wanted to change the color of the thread spools I can change the color of the buttons to whatever I want even the hot glue gun so you're going to have lots of options here okay and then once you've got your colors how you want it you can repeat that process that I just taught you so you would select your image you would add an offset hit apply we're going to change that offset to White and then you can select it all and flatten it and now you've created your own sticker super easy right so that's what you would do if you were working with an SVG and you wanting to turn it in to an actual sticker or a print thecut image okay it doesn't have to be sticker it could just be any type of print then cut now let's talk about the PNG so we've pulled this image in luckily for us this PNG does not have a background typically if you download a PNG image from the maker SK website you're not going to have a background on it um sometimes you will have to remove the background and we go over that in other videos but for this purpose if you download a PNG from the makers going to learn website you're going to basically be doing doing the same exact thing that we did with the SVG except this one is already flattened for us so we don't have to flatten it so this one we're just going to have to add the offset and then flatten the offset to it now the PNG does not allow you to alter the colors so you're not going to get the opportunity to change the colors here but these colors are beautiful anyways so all we would need to do is add that slight offset hit apply now you can keep your offset set black if you want you're welcome to use whatever color Offset you want typically white just looks better so we go with why but you can do it whatever you want and then you're going to want to make sure you flatten that offset to your PNG a lot of times people are tend to want to attach their offset to their PNG and that is not going to work so you can see here they're separate okay let's say hypothetically I selected both of these and I was like I'll just attach it it looks like it's going to cut out as one piece it looks like it's going to cut out all the way around here no no no no no it's going to cut out everything on this design and it's going to cut out all the way around here so that's one of the biggest mistakes people make whenever they're trying to cut pngs um you have to flatten that together okay you've got to flatten the words with the offset the reason being is because right now it's two separate layers and you can even see this over here in the layers panel this is your red flag right now if you see two layers and you're about to print and cut you're going to need to flatten your image when it comes to one layer you're good to go okay so do not attach your offset to your PNG you need to flatten your offset to your PNG okay anytime that we're working with print and and cut your image needs to be flattened right on a sticky note put it on your Cricut don't forget it now let's say that you pulled this PNG in and you're like why would I do an offset if Cricut offers me this create sticker button now this is something that you can use it's only in the beta version and it's only for Cricut access members so if you don't have Cricut access you can't even use this function that's why we don't talk about it a whole ton um but I'm going to show you just so you know this is a new feature of Cricut design space it's called the create sticker when we hit check it out you can select die cut or kiss cut the die cut is going to cut all the way through the backer of your sticker paper and create an individual sticker the kiss Cut's going to cut through that top layer of your printable vinyl and it's just going to make a sheet of stickers that you can peel off of the sheet so either one I'm going to select die cut and then I can select a thin standard wide or custom border so you can see it gets bigger as you bump it up and you're going to be able to change the color here and then you can hit apply once you get it how you want it now I feel like I have more freedom using my offset I've got a little bit more flexibility personally um not everyone has Cricut access so not everyone watching this video is going to have the opportunity to use that create sticker function but you all can see how quickly and easily I made these stickers over here so you really do not need to worry about if you do or don't have that feature on your Cricut design space okay so before we go to the make it screen I'm just going to delete this diecut sticker we're not using that today we're just going to be using our offset function and I am going to switch back to the live version just to avoid any printing ISS isues or anything like that so we're just going to go back to the live version and hit done it's going to reload design space real quick for us and then once that opens up we're going to go ahead and send this to the printer and I'm going to give you all the best tips and tricks for sending your printting and cut projects to their printer and to get the best quality so now that we're back in the live version I'm going to go to make it so once you get to this screen you can see all of our stickers are right here on this print then cut paper I can move this all the way up all the way over you can even rotate these if you need to if you're wanting to fit more on one sheet just be aware that you do have that offset around your image so you don't want these to get too close otherwise they're going to start cutting into each other and you can even see that offset there around the sticker so you don't want to get too close but you do want them to cut out individually we're going to be using an 8 and 1/2 by 11 sheet of sticker paper and I do not need to mirror so what we'll do next is hit continue and I'm going to send this to the printer now we do not need to add a bleed onto this okay a bleed is what you would use if you were doing a full color image so take for instance us adding that black offset that would allow the color to bleed all the way to the edges and we really do not need that because we have a white offset now if we wanted the black to go all the way to the edges we would add a bleed so that when it cuts we don't have any white space around our sticker at all I am using a Canon ts8100 series that printer as well as the ts9500 are our favorite ones to use turn off the bleed we're going to use the system dialogue and select print now if you're using a Macbook the dialog box box pops up behind design space sometimes it really depends on your computer I'm going to feed that from the rear tray and hit best quality and then send this to the printer now you can see I've bookmarked printable sticker paper white with the green liner printing the green liner printing allows us to create kiss cut stickers meaning that the cut does not go all the way through the lining if I wanted to make a diecut sticker there is an option for that so you're just going to go to printable and then you can see here there's a printable sticker paper white with gray liner printing that would give you a diecut sticker I want a kiss cut sticker which means I'm going to have an individual sticker when I'm done and I'm going to select done and you can always favorite any of your favorite cut settings that you're going to be using a lot that way they're right there in your bookmarked cut settings we're going to keep this on default pressure and keep our fine point blade loaded so when you get to set your base material you can see here we have a printable sticker paper white with the green liner printing this is going to give us a kiss cut meaning it's not going to cut all the way through the liner now if you wanted to do die cut stickers you would go to printable and you're going to look for the gray liner printing so printable sticker paper white gray liner printing this is going to give you a die cut sticker meaning you'll have individualized stickers but for today I'm going to use the green liner printing hit done and then go ahead and send this through my machine so we're just going to line this up to the top left corner of our mat I am using a light grip mat for this a well- loved standard grip mat will work as well and we're just going to burnish this down meaning we're taking this squeegee and making sure that our sticker paper is completely adhere to our mat so it does not move when we go to cut it and then we're going to load this into our cricket and what it's going to do is measure the mat and then when I hit go it's going to light up all of those registration marks so you can see when I hit a little light's going to come on and it's going to start scanning the registration marks sometimes people have issues especially with glossy paper and if you have a lot of really bright Lighting in your craft room or for us we've got really bright lights here in the studio but a lot of times you can take a sharpie and Mark on those registration marks and it'll allow the Cricut to actually read them because the gloss creates a shine thus preventing it from Reading those registration marks there's also lots of other print and cut hacks that you can do and I will link a video down below for you all if you're interested in learning more print and cut hacks and then before you remove it from the Cricut I like to make sure that everything was completely cut out I can see here that it was but I like to just lift up the edge and make sure because if it's not we can resend it through the Cricut you don't want to unload it but you can just hit the go button again don't hit this flashing button you're going to hit this go button again and it'll send it right back through and recut it now if you were to unload this and try to load it back in and recut it it's going to be completely off it will not me it will not cut around your sticker exactly the way it did the first time so we're going to go ahead and remove these and then we're going to remove this from the backer so you can remove all of this around your stickers cuz we don't really need it and this is going to show you exactly where it cut out which is really satisfying in my opinion so we're just going to remove all of this okay and then you can see we've got three stickers there so stinking cute now I want to talk about something because you're probably like wow that looks amazing and like it does look amazing cuz the print is great we use the great printer but let's talk about this sticker in particular so look right here beside a away do you see how close we are with the cut at a way so you can see right here how close that white Edge is to a away and then how far it is from the top of crafty this is telling me right here that my machine needs to be calibrated calibration is something you're going to hear when we talk about print the cut and I'm going to show you how to do it right now so let's go back into design space and what you're going to do is come up here to this drop- down menu we're going to go back to our settings you're going to go to machines from here you're going to go down to machine calibration and then we're going to select explore three that's the machine we're going to be using today and then you're going to hit start it's going to give you exact directions on how to do this so this is going to allow us to get the most accurate cuts for our print the cut so I'm going to select that you're going to select the printer you need to send it to and just load in some basic white paper you don't want to waste your sticker paper for this and then we're going to select print once you've got your sheet we're going to select continue so the sheet that it's going to print out looks a little bit crazy and the first time I saw it I was like what in the world is that but all we're going to need to do is place that up to the top left corner as straight as we can and then we're going to burnish this down make sure you use a light grip mat for this or your paper will stick to your mat and it will ruin your mat so we're just using a light grip or a well- l standard grip and then back in design space it's telling us place the sheet in the top left corner of your mat and then select continue I'm going to select the machine we're using it's going to load and then tell us what to do next so it's telling us to prepare the machine we're using a fine point blade and we're going to load this mat in okay so in design space it says without unloading examine the cut line around the small square in the middle of the calibration sheet does the cut line touch the printed line all the way around yes or no so let's go over to our machine and you can feel and I can see it you all probably cannot see that I know you can't see that at all um but it actually is pretty dang close we can actually remove this Square so you all can really see I'm going to bring it overhead so you can see how it cut so you can see here some of the black lines are a wee bit thicker than the others that means it touched but it still needs a fine calibration so it says does the cut line touch the printed line all the way around yes proceed to find calibration cuz it does it touched the whole thing so we're going to continue just put exactly what it says it does and now the machine is going to proceed to cut all of those individual lines and I'm going to show you all what we need to do next okay so back in design space for find calibration it says without unloading examine the lines on the top and right side of the calibration sheet use the drop downs to select the number or letter of the printed lines where the cut is centered with the printed line so let's go to our our Top Line and see which one it touched and there's a few that are very very close I wish I could bring this up closer to you all so you could really get a good visual but for me it's looking like it touches right down the middle of 11 and then for my letters it's right down the middle of K so 11k so back in Z space we're going to scroll down to 11 and then we're going to select K now if you have two like my K and my L were very close use your best judgment K was the closest for me and then I'm going to select continue now it's going to cut out that big rectangle and it should be perfectly calibrated at this point in design space it says without unloading examine the cut through the middle rectangle on the calibration sheet if it's easier to see you may remove the calibration sheet from the mad are you satisfied yes or no so you all can see if I lift this up and I'll show you overhead how close it got let's go overhead so you can see that is very centered that looks pretty good to me so back in design space I'm going to put yes it's close enough to the center and then we're going to select continue and calibration is complete so we're just going to resend to our printer remember turn your bleed off use your system dialogue that way you're getting the best quality print make sure adjust it to best and then send it through the printer now while that's printing I want to talk about something very important when you're working with stickers in particular I know that we're working with print then cut but stickers are such a big part of print then cut that I want you all to know what brand that we typically lean to whenever we're getting printable vinyl so you're going to see lots of different brands out there but our favorite by far is the zoto vinyl matte sticker paper they also have a glossy that's really amazing but I don't personally tend to lean to glossy the glossy that we used earlier in this video is the HTV glossy it's not my favorite the stickers tear very easily and so I went ahead and decided just to switch to this vinyl matte I feel like the matte is so much better and it looks so good and thank you guys are really going to love it so this is just basic printable matte sticker paper and you can see here on our print that just finished how good quality that color saturation is I just love it so you're going to lay this on here the same as we did before line it up as close as you can and you are going to want to burnish it down and then in design space we're going to use that green green liner printing again and then we're just going to send this through our cricket okay this is the Moment of Truth we're going to remove this outer lining and see how well everything lined up y'all already looks so much better so much better so you can really see a difference now how much calibration can really affect the offset and how centered your Cuts can be okay y'all what do you think about print and cut are you excited to make stickers and all of the fun print and cut projects make sure to check out our channel for more print and cut tips and tricks I'm going to link a couple hack videos down below for you all if you really want to dive into print and cut hopefully you all get a chance to sign up for our membership we would to have you as a part of our community and we will see you all in the next video