Tips For Weeding Small Vinyl Letters
Tips For Weeding Small Vinyl Letters – If you’ve ever tried weeding small vinyl letters or detailed cutouts just for the design or text to hold up when you’re weeding, you probably don’t do reverse weeding.
Weed the vinyl reverse weed from the adhesive duct tape, not the vinyl backing. Transfer tape keeps small letters and clippings from lifting up while you weed. Follow this tutorial to learn how to restore weed adhesive vinyl (this will not work for HTV).
Tips For Weeding Small Vinyl Letters
Place a piece of transfer tape that is larger than the vinyl piece over the entire piece of cut vinyl. Burn it to make it stick well.
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The adhesive side of the vinyl should be exposed on one side and the mesh conductive tape on the other side.
Place the piece on a flat surface with the adhesive side up. Now weed the vinyl. I usually start with the largest piece on the outside of the design.
You can use your hook or tweezers to grab a small piece of vinyl that needs to be removed.
This is how you weed in reverse: you’re really weeding through duct tape, not the vinyl backing that holds the small pieces in place.
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Once you’ve finished weeding, you can either place the vinyl decal on the surface you want to apply it or place it back on the vinyl backing/carrier sheet.
The result is the same as if you weeded self-adhesive vinyl from a vinyl backing the traditional way.
Note: This post may contain affiliate links. I earn a small commission by clicking on them and purchasing products through my links. This helps fund Silhouette School so I can continue to buy new Silhouette related products to show you how you can get the most out of your machine! fun stuff with my die cutting machine. For very small areas like pens or pencils, I’ve found the easiest way to work with small pieces of adhesive vinyl is a technique called reverse weeding. Today I’m going to walk you through a simple process of how to restore weeds with self-adhesive vinyl. I also made a short video for you, because I think it’s much easier to see in action than to explain. So, thanks to the reverse weeding technique, no tutorials are left behind!
Gather some pens and pencils to mark first. For today’s project I used a free SVG containing some bright neon pencils and the fun grammar phrases in the image below. I simply separated the expressions and reduced them to the size of my program.
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I then used my Silhouette to cut the design for the pencils onto Black Clay Vinyl. The settings that my machine cut best with a small cut were Blade 3, Speed 5, Force 5.
This is where things get interesting. Common Steps to Weeding a Chopped Vinyl Design. Instead of ripping the vinyl you don’t want in the first place, transfer it DIRECTLY to weed-free (is that a word?) vinyl. Then, as you peel off the transfer tape, the small letters stick and weed for you.
Using the weed, trace the small insides of the letters that come with it onto the transfer tape.
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Next, line it up on your pen or pencil, flatten it, and then remove the duct tape. The design will remain on the pencil.
Worried about peeling vinyl? Add a coat of clear nail polish on top to cover it.
Now, using reverse weeding, you can mark anything… no matter how small the cut! Learn something new or have you tried this method? Tell us about it below or head over to our FB community and feature it! We can’t wait to connect.
Also, don’t forget to share with a friend, because nothing makes a better friend than sharing your awesome crafting tips! This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to make a purchase, we may receive a commission, but it costs you nothing. Thank you!
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Whether you want to learn vinyl or iron-on, I hope these tips will get you there faster and with fewer mistakes!
Using this tactic, the most complex vinyl designs can be made very easily. Let us know if you have any other tricks in the comments below!
These vinyl weeding tips apply to all types of vinyl, whether it’s HTV, iron-on vinyl, or self-adhesive vinyl.
Most vinyl cutting machines have different blades. For example, the Cricut blade range includes a fine point blade, a deep cut blade and a rotary blade (among others). You want to use the right blade for each material you are cutting.
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It is also important to make sure that there are no pieces of paper or vinyl stuck to the cutting blade and that it is completely clean.
If you cut the vinyl with the blade too low, you’ll end up with a weeding area and a design.
Setting the mower to cut at the correct depth makes weeding much easier. Make sure your dial is set to the correct material setting. If you’re ever in doubt, do a test run to make sure your settings are correct for the specific type of vinyl you’re using.
I’ve been using my Cricut Explore Air 2 for years and I don’t know how many times I’ve forgotten to set the dial correctly before cutting. These days I mostly use the Cricut Maker and the material setup is selected on screen before cutting.
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The Siser EasyWeed is our favorite HTV – it cuts well, weeds well, looks fantastic and keeps the distance!
You’ll save a lot of time in the weeding process with this vinyl, thanks to its easy weeding and pressure-sensitive backing.
Cricut iron on is another quality brand that you can use for your transfer projects. It comes in a variety of colors and styles, including: metallic, glitter, and glitter.
The label says “iron on,” but the Cricut HTV is also perfect for use on a heat press machine.
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This is a permanent adhesive vinyl that is considered by many to be the best craft adhesive vinyl you can buy.
Heat your bottom heat press board for 2-3 seconds (about 300°F). Place your HTV on a heated bottom plate and the heat will loosen the adhesive on the pressure sensitive backing. This will make it easier to remove any excess vinyl. Watch how it’s done in the video below.
*No need to use a heat press for this. Alternatively, you can (safely) heat the surface with an iron or Cricut EasyPress.
If you can see exactly where the cut lines are, it’s a good idea to weed out the inner cavities first before pulling off all the excess vinyl.
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If you try to pull off the excess vinyl first and then try to get the inner cavities, your hand will stick to the carrier sheet.
After removing the inner cavities of the letters, the next step is to remove the excess vinyl core. However, there is a right and a wrong way to do this!
When pulling the vinyl, you need to make sure you are doing it upside down. Effectively pulls vinyl back and into letter cavities. This causes less disruption and speeds up the weeding process!
If you have several different components in one design, you can place a box around each component in your cutting program. Your cutter will cut a box around each component in your design. Then you can divide your whole design into parts. When you roll your vinyl into individual strips, you’ll make weeding less complicated!
Reverse Weeding Adhesive Vinyl
If you are cutting multiple designs on one sheet of vinyl, you can place a box around each design and mulch them separately. If you have really small or delicate details, you can put a weeding box around them so that you can be extra careful when weeding them.
In the video below, Jessica from Expressions Vinyl shows how to put a weed out box in Silhouette Studio. If it’s for a t-shirt, be sure to flip or mirror the design. See how to create a weed box in Cricut Design Space here.
We have a whole post dedicated to weeding out the Christmas mug project, but we’ll share the gist here.
Reverse weeding is for adhesive vinyl only. Here, you apply transfer tape across the weed-free decal, then peel the excess vinyl away from the transfer tape instead of the carrier sheet.
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In theory, it’s easier to weed for smaller decals than doing it the normal way! See the extended post for