🔥 20 CRICUT HACKS TO TURN A BEGINNER INTO A PRO FAST! 🔥

Hey everyone, Tanner Bell here. Welcome back to the Makers & Learn YouTube channel. In today's video, I am so excited because we are going to share with you not 5, not 10, but 20 different hacks to turn a Cricut beginner into a pro. The reason why I'm so excited about this video is traditionally it would take you months, if not years, to kind of learn these hacks on your own. But in one YouTube video, we're going to share with you 20 hacks that I always use on a daily or weekly basis that is going to help elevate your Cricut journey so much in such a short amount of time. I know you're going to find all 20 of these valuable, so go ahead and give the video a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel if you're brand new here. We would love to help you here at the Makers & Learn channel master your Cricut machine. And if you're interested, check out our membership, first link down below. If you're excited, let's go ahead and jump right in to all 20 of these. And as you learn these, leave me some comments. Let me know which one you didn't know, which one's your favorite. And I'm so excited to share these with you. All right, my friends, if you watch any of our videos here at the Makers & Learn channel, number one is obvious to you. This is leaving your vinyl on the mat as you weed to allow the Cricut mat to be your third hand. Notice as I weed, it is extremely useful that the vinyl is still on the mat. This is one of my absolute favorite hacks that I think you all will find very usable when you're weeding. This has changed the game for so many Cricut users out there. I kind of developed the weeding on the mat hack many, many years ago back before I think the Cricut Maker was even a machine. And we've been doing this for so long. So I think you all will enjoy it as well. And look at this. I mean, it helps you so much with your weeding. If I was trying to do this without the mat, you would not see it be too successful at all. So then you can come in and just continue weeding. You can see for these bigger images that the HDV kind of comes up sometimes just because you're applying so much pressure, but it is still very, very helpful. And that will depend also on your mat stickiness. So right here, you can just weed all of this up. It's very simple. And look at this, not having to worry about it moving around as you weed, just like so. And there you have it, my friends. After you weed, you can just fill this up and you're going to see that your image is all ready to go and you'll be able to press it down with that heat transfer vinyl. This same process would work if you're using vinyl or heat transfer vinyl when you discuss weeding on the mat. All right, my friends, hack number two, you're going to want to have a t-shirt that you are going to press. I like to use the EasyPress mat underneath, and I have my Cricut EasyPress right here. Now, the question I get asked all the time, Tanner, how do I find the middle of my shirt? Let me share with you exactly what I do to find the middle of my shirt. So for the hack, you're going to take these right here. I like to line these up and then you're going to be able to find the middle of the shirt. So I pick it up and just kind of let it flow. I like to pick it up like this, shake it, and as long as these two are lined up, you can press it and lay it back down onto your mat. And I just like to stretch these out. And what we're going to do is we're going to create kind of like a pressing line. So we're going to create a line right here with our EasyPress to know exactly the exact middle of the shirt. So just like so, you're going to take this and press. So I press this for roughly five to ten seconds. And this just helps me know where the exact center is. So look right here. So there you have it. So now you can open this up and you can see we have a very faint straight line going down here on the shirt. Now, you may say, Tanner, how do I then line up and make sure my design is perfectly centered as well? So let me grab my design. And this is the one we just weeded. And what we're going to do is we're actually going to fold this together and we're going to take the edge of both designs. So from the edges. So one point that I want you all to know, if you notice the transfer is not cut evenly. So don't worry about the transfer. Worry about the two designs. So like focus on just where your design is. Fold it. Line up those two edges like so. And then once you have just at the top right here, pinch down. And then at the bottom down here, pinch down. All right. So now we have two intentions. And I always put my shirt about three inches down from the top. And look at that. We can line up all our lines. So our indention at the top, our indention in the bottom already lines up with our line going down. And then you can press this right here. I will say your pressing line comes out after you, you know, press again. So no big deal. You can now take your heat press and you're going to be able to press your shirt. And then once you pressed it, you can remove this. And as you can see, it's that easy to confidently line up the center of your shirt with the center of your design every single time. All right, my friends, if you're anything like me, you're always wanting to apply vinyl to some really unique surfaces, maybe an ornament or maybe a tumbler. So let me share with you how I like to have two kind of random objects to help keep them in place. Number one for our ornament, guess what? It's a piece, a nice little roll of scotch painter's tape, something simple, any tape will do. And that way it'll keep it right in place when applying vinyl. Now for our tumblers, you guys will not believe this. This is a 143 squeegee tool. It has this indention right here, which is perfect for us because we'll be able to sit a tumbler right there in the center and it keeps it pretty sturdy when needing to apply vinyl. Is that not an awesome hack? You guys are going to love that one. Now, since we have the tumbler, we're actually going to use this one for the next hack as well. So our next hack, we are talking about any glass or any porous surface that needs or may have residue you may need to clean off. So since our tumbler is part of our next hack, we're going to use this too. So any non-porous surface like glass, tumblers, anything like that can have a buildup of residue that you need to clean off. And you'll get a better vinyl application when you clean it off with rubbing alcohol. So at the Dollar Tree, you can get these pump bottles. They're very popular. You can open and close it. So I just open mine and then you pump, you'll get the perfect amount of rubbing alcohol and you'll be able to clean this off. Now, I want to challenge you guys, if you've never done this hack, to do it onto a surface and then try to apply vinyl to it. You'll see the vinyls go apply so much better than before. It really does help and you'll get a longer lasting vinyl every single time. All right, for hack number five and six, I have something super fun for you. So I have vinyl that's already cut out and it already has transfer tape on it. But this is the tip that people forget about. It's burnishing. So we need to burnish it, right? So we're right now burnishing the vinyl onto the backer and then I like to pull it up and then I like to burnish the back to make sure that it is going to come off really well. So the first time you're burnishing is to make sure the vinyl is attached to the transfer tape, and the second time you're burnishing is to make sure, you know, again that vinyl is on that transfer tape, not the backing any longer. So then you take your edge and you go peel it up. Amazing result. Now for hack number six, we want to talk about applying vinyl to round surfaces. Here's what you don't want to do. You don't want to go in and just lay it flat because it can create air bubbles and it can actually hurt your design. What we recommend doing for round surfaces is we like to create some slits. So you can trim this down or just create more slits, whichever you prefer, all the way around your design, just like so. And then what you're going to be able to do is apply it. And what you'll notice is you're kind of giving it grace to go and lay flat like it should. So then you can come in here and just lay this down, just like so. And then I take my finger and just apply it down. And if you need to peel some of it up, make sure it goes down well, you could easily do that. And look at this, such a great result. And then one thing that the slits help you do is when you need to remove the transfer tape. So it kind of goes down in different sections, which is totally fine. You can just start peeling up this right here. For ornaments, I also love using masking paper transfer tape. You'll find it's really great to use masking paper transfer tape for projects like this as well. So I think you'll be really impressed with either transfer tape you go with. The clear is just sometimes kind of hard to see even on your ornament. And as you can see, my friends, you have your vinyl now on your ornament. All right, my friends, for hack number seven, I want to encourage you guys to use non-brand Cricut products. For example, we absolutely love our products from StarCraft. That is from 143 Vinyl. That's where we get our StarCraft material. So good. You could also look at using some Siser EasyWeed. Such a great heat transfer vinyl product for you guys to try out. And we've even been using some other products like Techwrap Vinyl, which is right here. They have so many fun patterns. And a lot of times, not only is better products out there on the market than just Cricut brand products, they're going to save some money. We're going to keep some money in your pocket when it comes to using non-brand Cricut items. I think you'll be really impressed with how it is going to be. I know for me, when I was able to find out that there was other products other than Cricut brand out there that was cheaper and possibly better quality, really changed my world. So as you watch the Maker's Glearn channel, you're going to find out that we don't use a ton of Cricut brand material when it comes to vinyl and heat transfer vinyl. We love some of their faux leathers. We love some of their other material. But when it comes to vinyl and heat transfer vinyl, there's other ones that we prefer at much better prices. So that is going to help not only elevate you into a pro crafter, but it's actually going to keep some money in your pocket, which I think you'll appreciate. All right, my friends, when it comes to specialty material or really sometimes just about any material in your mats, just not that sticky, right? Like this one's got a little love on it, but you know, it's still got quite a bit of use out of it. I want to encourage you to do this hack right here. First of all, you're going to apply your vinyl on here. And of course, you're going to try to like, you know, make sure it stays. But if you still feel like it's just not going to stay down well enough, I want to encourage you to use a brayer. This is a Cricut brayer. We love this here. We love any brayer. And this just helps make sure to activate the adhesive and make sure to apply this down really, really well. And let's say we're using a specialty material or chipboard or something like that. And it's just there's no way it's We encourage you to grab some masking tape and just simply tape around the edges here to make sure it's going to stay in place. That will not hurt your blade or anything like that. It's actually normal to have some masking tape or those thicker materials like chipboard on the edge here. And we've never ran into any issues when running it through the Cricut machine. All right, my friends, while we're still on the topic of our mat stickiness, and I have this mat that just, you know, it looks good, but it's not as sticky as I would like it, right? It's been loved on. I want to encourage you guys to not throw away your mats right after they lose a little stick. But I encourage you to grab a baby wop. This is a really easy hack that will change your game and again, keep some money in your pocket. You're going to grab a baby wop and within circular motion, we're actually going to clean our Cricut mat with a baby wop. You're going to apply a medium to mild pressure and you're going to start seeing that a lot of this residue is going to actually come up. So you can see it's starting to come up and I just do circular motion just like so all over the mat. And it might take two to three baby wops to really revive a mat. And when you do this technique, you'll notice the mat is a little mild sticky, like the sticky has actually went away worse. It's because the baby wop is actually wet. So when you have a wet or a damp baby wop or paper towel or anything like that, it's actually going to not be sticky at all. But as it draws, the stickiness comes back tenfold because you're removing any and all of that residue from the mat, which is really, really handy. So again, circular motions all over the Cricut mat. This works fantastic for any fabric-y material you've used on a mat. I highly recommend this for fabric grip mats and things like that. Super, super handy. Again, you will use three or four baby wops depending on how wet they are. This pack is not that wet at all, so I'm using probably about four. But it's definitely getting all the residue off. And I've tested two to three or four really different mat hacks to clean. And the baby wop is my favorite one because you don't leave your craft room. You're able to stay in your craft space. Everyone can grab a pack of baby wops. They sell them at the Dollar Tree. You'll pick them up and just clean the residue off. And there you have it, my friend. After you have cleaned your mat, you'll be able to dispose of your wipes. And then you're just going to let this sit out and air dry for about five to ten minutes. All right, my friends, we have jumped over to Cricut Design Space for hack number ten. This is one we recently developed, and I think you're going to be high key impressed with it. So if you've never heard of it, when I tell you, drop me a comment down below because you will want to have this one. So for example, let's say you've welded two different fonts together. You've saved the project. A month later, you come back to it and you're like, oh my gosh, I need these fonts again, but I have no idea what the name is. Have no fear. I have a hack for you. Select the layer. You're going to see once it's selected, it's highlighted dark gray in the layers panel. You're going to want to come over to the just the text and you're going to want to left click. So you just click and then come down here to image info. You're going to see under image info, you can see faintly the two selected fonts. And it even tells you that you did a weld result of an offset. So it gives you a little intel on how you got the design you have today, which for this project, the Ruby Claire, you were able to see we used amber light and a chiffon font. So both of those together created this project right here. And again, even further down, it tells you it was a weld result of an offset, which I find really handy and very helpful for cricketers like me that always forget, hey, what font did I use? I already welded it. I have no idea. All right, my friends, for the next hack, we're still in Cricut design space for hack number 11. And this one is a really sneaky, sneaky way to take an image outside of design space. As you guys know, unfortunately, we cannot export any design to a JPEG, PNG, SVG from Cricut design space. So this hack is the best thing that we could do if you've designed something in design space, but need to get it into another program. So what we're going to do is actually remove the grid from the background. If you guys did not know, you don't have to craft with this grid here. I find it very overwhelming and just unnecessary. So what you can do is come up here to the three lines, press that, you'll find your profile, home, canvas, and a bunch of different buttons. I want you to scroll down to settings. Once you've found it, select settings, and you're going to see the design space settings area. From general, I want you to work your way over to canvas, select it, and you can see under canvas grid, we're going to select no grid. Beautiful. Press done, and voila. Now you're going to be able to take something like our design that we were just playing with, and you can now screenshot this, and then from the screenshot, be able to import it in other programs and things like that. If you're using a Mac, you can press command shift four, and your cursor now turns into a photo. So you can now press down when you're ready to start your screenshot, and you can see how much you're selecting, just like so. And when you release the cursor, you now have an amazing screenshot, and this is the best way to take something you've designed in Cricut and pull it outside of Cricut. If you're using a Windows device, you will be able to use the snipping tool, which is very similar to a screenshot here on a Mac. For hack number 12, this is for Cricuters that need to kind of like press the gas on their projects, meaning you have a lot going on at one time. Have you ever had that? Have you ever worked on multiple projects at one time? I'm guilty of it, and I know a lot of you at home are too. So let me share with you how you can set up multiple Cricut Design Space windows, because previously you could not do that. So if you want to open another Cricut Design Space window, simply come up to file, and there's going to be a button that says new window. So all you need to do is press new window, and boom, now you have a second Cricut Design Space right here. So you can switch between the two really easily, and you could set up new projects and things like that, and go back and forth with it. Now if you have two Cricut machines, you could also cut from two different machines at the same time, and things just like that. All right, my friends. So before we jump back over to Design Space, we actually need to measure a blank. Have you ever needed to measure a blank and put it in Design Space to design your project exactly to the size of your blank? In today's tip or tip or hack number 13, we're going to share with you how to do just that. We are going to take this right here, and we're going to measure it, and you can see this is 11.75 inches round. So now we can head over to Design Space, and I'll share with you how to set that up as a guide for your design. So once you're back over in Cricut Design Space, you're going to click on Shapes, and you're going to grab a circle. So traditionally when I've taught this, you were using just a regular cut image. Today they'll actually allow you to set it up as a guide, but before we do that, we need to type in our size. So I come up here to the width, and I'm going to remove the two, and I'm going to type in 11.75, and voila. Now this is a cut, you know, image. So meaning Cricut would think we actually wanted to cut this circle, but you know that we actually want it to be a guide. So come up here to Operation, and look. They have been listening to us because they know we've been measuring our blanks and putting in shapes for years, so now they've allowed us to use a guide. So click Guide, and voila. It's a red outline that is never going to cut. There's nothing on here to make, so look, the Make It button goes away. Now you have a perfect guide to bring your product from the craft table into Design Space. All right my friends, in hack number 14, what we're going to do is we're going to take this image that is only using four colors, and we're going to teach you how to use Color Sync and bring it down to two colors. So what you'll want to do is come over here to Color Sync. It's right under the Make It button. Select it, and now what you're going to do is just drag one of the colors down to another, and then I'm going to bring this yellow down to the orange, and voila. Now we're going to be able to make this project instead of using three or four different colors of vinyl, we're only using two colors of vinyl. How awesome does that look? And it simplifies it down for a lot of you that may not have four different colors of vinyl. I think you'll find Color Sync very handy when working with Makers Glen Cut Files. So if you need access to thousands of cut files, hundreds of fonts, and the ultimate place to master that Cricut machine of yours, definitely check out our membership down below where you can become a member for as low as $19.99 a month. All right my friends, for hack number 15, I want to show you a little secret that can help save you time and energy when cutting. Let's say you want to cut two different colors of vinyl on one mat, and you can totally do that, but it takes a little bit more know-how for you. So instead of cutting two mats, we're going to do one. So let me share with you how to bring your blue image to the yellow mat above. So the blue layer right here has three dots. We're going to select those, and we're going to select Move Object. So we're going to move it to this mat right here, and then we're going to press Confirm. Now we have one mat, and we can drag this down right here. We're going to grab it and drag it down to the bottom. So now we know that the yellow mat is going to need to be about five by seven inches right here. So about five by seven from the top left-hand corner, and then our blue mat needs to be roughly one, two, three, four by one, two, three, four, five, six, seven as well. So, you know, four by seven for our blue layer down here, and then we have this layer up top. So now we're cutting both of those vinyl pieces. We're going to lay them right where they need to be on the mat, and you can use this as a visual guide, and then you'll be able to run it through one time for both colors of vinyl. It takes a little more know-how and follow-through, but again, you'll save time every single time once you get this hack down pat. All right, friends, for hack number 16, this is a good one. As you know, at Makers & Learn, we give you a variety of printable cut files, cuttable cut files, so many different things. I want to teach you how you can turn anything into a sticker. So this file right here is meant to cut. So what we're going to do is select both of these layers, and we're going to simply press flatten. What flatten does is it turns your images, your cut images, into a printable image. So maybe you don't have these colors in vinyl. No worries. Press flatten. You'll print out these images, and then it'll cut out as a sticker. Now, if you want it to look truly like a sticker as a little bonus, here's what I would recommend. Since it's flattened now, just do a quick offset, and you're going to be able to quickly see. You can just play around with the offset, just like so, and press apply. So then you have an awesome offset where you have now an amazing sticker. So that will be a really, really easy way to do this technique. And then what we're going to do now, since these two are not attached, we're going to select both of them and just press attach. Or actually, since they're printable, you could press flatten. But before you do that, if you didn't want the background to be black, you just wanted a white offset, you would select the black layer, come up here, and you could go to white. Now you could select both of them again and press flatten. Ta-da! So now let me share with you in hack 17 how to get the best print image every time. So for hack number 17, let's go to press make it, and you're going to see it's right here. So let's press continue, and let's click send to printer. Once you're here, you're going to want to turn on system dialog. Turn that on and press print. Notice I'm not even worried about my printer yet, and it says preparing for print. Now if you're a Cricut beginner, you're gonna be like, where's my system dialog? Why is it not popped up? Well my friends, this is one of those hacks you just have to learn. For some reason, it's just waiting for you back here. It instantly pops up, but it's always backwards. Here is where you're going to want to select your favorite printer. Here's where you can say feed from the rear tray, and this tip is one of my favorites. You're gonna go from a normal print quality. We're just gonna move her on up to the best quality, and then you can hit print and follow through with your print and then cut design. All right my friends, for hack number 18, this is an amazing hack that I think a lot of you will benefit from. So looking right here, you can see when you're using fonts and you are drawing, this is what it would traditionally look like. But luckily, Makers Can Learn has developed some amazing sketch fonts. These are amazing sketch fonts that you'll be able to do, and I'm honestly obsessed with these. So the hack here is to test out sketch fonts rather than just using any font right here time and time again and getting these weird outlines. We have linked down below a ton of our sketch fonts that you'll be able to use if you're a member at Makers Can Learn, and remember it's super easy to become a member. You get instant access to so many amazing things, so you get that when you become a member, and this totally looks much better than this up here. So that is the hack. Start using sketch fonts in your designing to make sure you get the best high quality look when you're using pens or markers with that Cricut machine of yours. For hack number 19, this is one that I think a lot of you will appreciate. Let's say you have a piece of faux leather. Maybe you have a specialty material like this vinyl right here. You've never cut with it, you're not sure how it's going to do, and you only have a limited supply. Maybe you only have one piece. What the heck do you do to make sure you get the best cut quality possible? My friends, for hack number 19, it's do a test cut. What that means is a simple test cut. I recommend a square, circle, or my personal favorite is a star. The star can be anywhere from two to three inches wide by two to three inches wide, and it can be up in the corner. And what you're going to do, do the test cut, see how well it cuts and how well it weeds. If you can get a star to cut and weed really well, chances are no matter what image you're doing, no matter what you're cutting, you'll get a great cut every single time without wasting the whole sheet. Just testing it out for a larger image when you only have one sheet to work with. All right, my friends, for hack number 20, you are going to love this one. This is called the taco method. This is when you're wanting to apply your image really well and you're nervous, right? So I like to, you know, take my design with the vinyl and the transfer tape and create like a little taco, and then I can apply it and kind of see my design really, really well and then just simply apply it down. So just like so, it helps relieve any air bubbles and things like that from my design every single time. I always do that technique. I think it's just really nice to always remember to do that and then you can burnish and then peel back. And just like so, the taco method is a flawless technique for you to use in your Cricut journey. All right, my friends, there it was. 20 different hacks to take you from a beginner to a pro really fast. Which one was your favorite? I'm dying to know. Drop me a comment down below, give the video a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel for more amazing Cricut videos and hack videos to master your machine every single day. If you're interested in some of those sketch fonts, thousands of cut files, hundreds of fonts, checkout maker's gonna learn down below. We are dying to have you join our community to see everything you get access to. And until the next video, I'll see you back here real soon. Bye, guys.