How To Make Print Then Cut Stickers

Have you been putting off trying out the print then cut feature? After talking to so many of you it’s obvious that print then cut is one of those things that no one wants to try for fear of messing up and ruining perfectly good material. Trust me, I’ve been there and I came out on the other side A OK.

Today, I’ll walk you through the ins and outs of working with printable vinyl and Cricut’s Print Then Cut feature in Design Space. I’ll take it step by step so you can follow along and successfully complete your first kiss cut!

Gather These Supplies:

• Inkjet Printable Vinyl (I’m linking my personal favorite here but there are several great brands)
• Inkjet Printer (the heat from a laser printer will damage the vinyl so inkjet is necessary)
• Cutting Mat
• Cricut Machine (I use the Maker and Explore Air 2)

Step One: Download Free Printable Stickers

To start, visit the free downloads page here and download any of the free printable stickers. This way we’re working on ta similar project and it’s easier to follow along. Plus, they’re super cute and I’m sure you can find a use for them!

Step Two: Upload To Design Space

Go to the upload tab on the left side of the screen and drag and drop the downloaded design onto the screen. When you see the window below, select complex as the image type and click continue. 

In the “select and erase” window you will not need to do anything, just click continue in the bottom right.

The following window is where you will save the design as either a print then cut image or a cut image. Since we’re making printable stickers you’ll need to choose the print then cut option then click save.

Step Three: Scale and Print

Open up all of the images you wish to print onto the canvas and scale them to the desired size. Most stickers are between 3-3.5 inches so I typically set mine to 3.5″.

Cricut will only allow you to print then cut up to a certain size. The available print area is 9.25″ by 6.75″. If it helps, you can create a rectangle on your canvas as a guide, that way you know how much space you have to work with.

This is totally optional but it does help with sizing and setup. Just be sure to hide or delete the rectangle before continuing.

Click the make it button to continue.

In the next window you can adjust the number of copies to fill up the page or pages. You can see the project copies is set to 2 so the software duplicated each design. The black box around the design is the registration box that the machine will read to determine the cut area.

Click “send to printer”.

In the print setup window turn on both the bleed option and the system dialog option then click PRINT.

The printer window should pop up and this is where you set your paper type and print quality. I set the paper type to photo paper and slide the quality all the way to best.

After printing is complete you should have a page that looks similar to the one below.

Step Four: Cut Images

Back in Design Space you now can set the cutting material. Since I want single stickers and not a sheet of stickers, I cut on the light chipboard setting.

Place the printed sheet on the cutting mat and load the mat into the machine then press the start button. The machine will first read the registration marks and then begin cutting.

The light chipboard setting allows the machine to make two passes around each sticker, this way you can be sure it’s cutting all the way through the vinyl AND the paper backing.

When you unload the mat you can peel away the excess vinyl and you’re left with perfectly cut out single stickers.

If you prefer a sheet of stickers for planner use, simply change the cut settings to printable vinyl and the machine will only cut through the top layer of vinyl leaving the paper backing sheet in tact.

If you have any questions leave them below or send me an email!