Delayering Iron-On Vinyl for Improved Wearability

Two major issues with multiple-single-color vinyl designs are that there is no method for registering the various colors so the cuts all line up, and that many images are built color-layer upon color-layer, resulting in a finished product that is thick, inflexible, and vulnerable to multiple failure modes (adhesive doesn't stick to blank; adhesive doesn't stick to adhesive; bulging layered area more prone to vinyl being melted during application, or being torn during wear...)

Cricut Design Space's Duplicate and Slice tools make it very easy to remove the underlayers from your design and create a finished product that is well-adhered, comfortable to wear, and long-lasting.

Here's how to do it.

I.

Select a design and bring it into your canvas. (You can either select something from Cricut Access and choose the "Customize" option, or select something from another source.) For this example, I'm using "Koala Hugging Heart" (#MA52A3F9) from Cricut's "A Land Down Under" collection.



As you will note from the Layers panel on the right, this image is composed of three overlapping images, with the inside ears and features cut out of both the middle red layer and upper gray layer. You will also notice that the three layers are grouped.
.

While this would create a great three-dimensional image on cardstock (using glue dots between the black and red layers, and dimensional dots between the red and gray layers), in vinyl this would  create two layers through much of the graphic, expanding to three layers over the koala itself. So, we are going to use the duplicate and slice functions to remove the underlayers.

II.

Select the image. 

From the Layers panel (or the Edit panel on a tablet or smartphone), select "Ungroup". 

This allows us to work each layer individually, or in groups of two for slicing.

III.

Select the red and black layers. (You can select multiple layers by holding down the <Shift> key on a computer, or long-pressing the second and subsequent layers on your tablet or phone.)

Select Slice from the bottom of the Layers menu (computer), or from the Actions menu (tablet or phone). 

This will give you three "slices": 

• a red koala
• an identical black koala, and 
• a black set of koala ears-and-features.

IV.

From the Layers panel, select the black koala.  (It doesn't matter that the red koala is on top.)

Delete the black koala.

V.

Select the gray koala and the red koala.

To make sure they're aligned correctly, select "Align" from the menu bar (computer) or the Edit menu (tablet or phone), and select "Align left" and then "Align middle".

Select Slice from the bottom of the Layers menu (computer), or from the Actions menu (tablet or smartphone). 

Again, this will give you three "slices":

• the original gray koala
• an identical red koala
• a red heart with cutouts for the koala's paws.

VI.

Select, then delete, the red koala.

VII (optional).

If you want to save vinyl, you can separate the inside ears from the facial features as follows:

Select "Shapes" from the menu bar, then select "Square".

Position the square over one ear of the koala.

Select the square and the Slice Result containing the koala's features.

Select "Slice".

Select and delete the square.

Select and delete the extra koala inner ear.

Repeat for the second ear.

This will leave you with five layers instead of three. On the original 6.664" x 5" image, this will save about a 2" square of vinyl, about half of the black vinyl needed to cut the image already laid out. Vinyl savings will increase with a larger image size.

Color changed to yellow for visibility

VIII. 

Cut your image.

Remember to mirror iron-on vinyl (or conversely, don't mirror it and do a koala facing to the left). Weed all cut images.

IX. Applying vinyl

For the example image, iron on the koala first. Peel the carrier and keep it (we'll come back to it).
Position the facial features and inner ears. Place the carrier from the koala on top of the image before ironing on the eyes and inner ears.
Peel, retaining again the carrier from the koala.
Position the heart. Again cover the koala with its carrier before ironing on the last part of the image.

For a more complex image, you might want to make a copy of all the parts of the image, change it all to a single color, and cut out the copy in cardstock to use as a template.

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas

Last year, the overwhelming "stop playing this, already" Christmas song was Elvis's "Blue Christmas", leading me to do a pair of multiprocess blue T-shirts including the ghosts of Elvis, and on one version, (Bob) Marley's ghost. ("The obligatory Dickensian reference.") This year, I must have heard "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" a dozen times between Thanksgiving Day and the following Monday. So when my sister decided she needed some new Christmas T's for a competition at work, hippos were still on our mind...

Since I'm not much of an artist, I searched Cricut Access for images of hippos. To make the friendly-looking beast (Cricut Access image M2E803) Christmas-y, I added a Santa Hat (Cricut Access image M188702D) and a string of lights (Cricut Access image M8AE3A8A) to the composition. Having all the elements I needed, I had to combine them into an image that made sense.

I removed the grayscale hat, moved the red hat and changed its angle to sit on my hippo's head. Then I had to see about moving the lights so it looked like they were being worn as a necklace. Fortunately, the hippo image is a group of layers, some of which include a separate head.

I ungrouped the hippo and moved the two head-only images in front of the lights. I then turned on the narrower of the black underlayers so we could see the hippo's black eyes.

It was about this point that I ran my first paper prototype and found that the slices that give form to the hippo's legs, toes, nostrils, ears, and mouth are just single cuts which would disappear in an iron-on. At that point I hid everything but the hippopotamus, screen-captured my Design Space screen, brought it up in Paint, thickened the lines in question, and saved it out as an image to import back into Design Space. I used the original image and the Slice function to separate the better-defined hippo into head and body sections.

The other thing I realized is that half the lights are digging into the hippo's neck. I used squares, the Slice function and the Weld function to turn the light sockets around so
they all faced out, and rotated the lights as necessary.



At this point, the folk at Cricut would have you think the design was ready to go...

Not so fast!

With all of the layers involved, the finished T-shirt would be very thick and inflexible. I needed to turn off everything I didn't need in the finished shirt, and once I cut everything, trim things back to minimize the amount of layering needed. (That meant cutting the head off the black version of the entire hippo, because it was only duplicating the black head that would lay over the string of lights.) I also detached all of the lights so they would use a lot less vinyl; I could position them by hand.

After weeding, I placed everything in layers in some semblance of registration so I knew which layers had to go on the shirt in what order. I printed out a screenshot of my Design Space design so I knew how it all had to go together. Then I took it all to work so I could use our classroom's Easy Press to put everything together.

According to my sister, the shirt was a hit!