Do I Really Need Cricut Brand Infusible Ink Blanks?

The new Cricut Infusible Ink products are really hot right now! People are diving in and giving them a try with some amazing results. One of the big questions that die cutting fans have though is, “Do I Really Need Cricut Brand Infusible Ink Blanks?”

Creating infusible ink craft projects is a lot of fun but it can be a bit pricier than your typical die cutting projects. So, many people are trying to find ways to save a little money when working with infusible ink.

Cricut Brand Infusible Ink Blanks vs. Off-Brand Blanks

We’re going to put some products to the test – comparing Cricut brand coasters, t-shirts, and tote bags with some from other brands.

To give you an idea of the savings, let’s look at the prices of the infusible ink products. The Cricut brand tote bag is approximately 13″ by 15″ and it’s $10. The Cricut t-shirts are also $10 each and most people find them pretty true to size. Finally, the Cricut coasters are $12.99 for a pack of 4.

Now, let’s take a look at the off-brand items. We found these oroducts on Amazon. The tote bags were $24 for a package of 8 ($3 each). The t-shirts were $14 for a pack of 2 ($7 each). And the coasters – are you ready for this? They were $14 for 100 coasters (54 cents for a pack of 4)!

If you want to learn exactly how to use Cricut Infusible Ink properly, you need to check out our video: A Beginner’s Guide to Cricut Infusible Ink. This will give you a step-by-step tutorial on exactly how to use the product from beginning to end.

We’re starting with our off-brand tote bag. As you can see from the results below, the ink sublimated okay but we can’t really call this a great outcome as it is somewhat uneven. The ink has not saturated into the fabric the way we want it to.

In addition, the tote bag fabric has bunched up around where the Cricut EasyPress was, leaving an outline of the area where it had been.

When we repeat the same procedure on a Cricut brand Infusible Ink tote bag blank, you can see we get much better results.

Next, let’s try our design on a Cricut brand t-shirt.

As you can see it turned out beautifully! The colors are bright and vibrant and the design is fully saturated into the fabric. Even when you stretch the fabric out, it still looks perfect.

Next, we tried the same design and process on a Hanes t-shirt. We got absolutely flawless results here. It turned out perfectly – in fact, you’ll have to judge for yourself, but we think that the Hanes t-shirt gave us even brighter, more vibrant colors than the Cricut shirt did!

Finally, we tried using infusible ink on our coasters. As you can see, the results are pretty dramatic. The results on the Cricut brand infusible ink coaster is so much more vibrant and dramatic than on the off-brand coaster.

So, what does this mean when it comes to answering our question, “Do I Really Need Cricut Brand Infusible Ink Blanks?” Well, we think that if even one off-brand product works as well or better than Cricut brand, it means that there could be others out there that do too!

Depending on the infusible ink craft project you want to make and the price difference, it could very well be worth experimenting!