FAUX WOOD BURNING TECHNIQUE

September 21, 2022 by Paula W

No wood-burning kit? No problem! You are going to LOVE our faux wood burning technique. It’s so easy to do too!

FAUX WOOD BURNING TECHNIQUE

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Font Used:

Honey Suckle

Supply Links:

Step-by-step Instructions:

Download the font from Makers Gonna Learn. Then, unzip the file and install it on your computer.
In Design Space, grab a square and size it up to whatever size you want. This is to represent the working space available on our finished project so we can size and visualize it correctly. In this tutorial, ours is 4.5”x3”.
Open a text box and type in your chosen text, changing it to the font you want to use. Depending on which font you choose, you may need to kern the letters (move them closer together to join). To do this, with your text selected, choose Ungroup. Then, we’re moving our letters closer together and position them as we wish.
You will see that when we chose the “Weld” part of the center of the “o” filled in. This is because the letters were too close together. However, they are exactly where we want them, so here’s a hack for fixing that. Instead of choosing Weld as we usually would, we are choosing Attach. Note: if this was a piece of vinyl you were going to apply to your project, you would still need to select the word, choose Weld, and then you’d have to do some slicing to correct the letter “o”. Since we’re using this as a stencil, you can just Attach them.
Move your text over to the rectangle and size it accordingly. Now, select both the rectangle and the text and Attach it.
Click Make It. Then, Continue and connect to your machine. Set the material to vinyl. Place your vinyl on the cutting mat and load it into the machine. Press that flashing Cricut button.
When cutting is complete, weed your project. Remember you are weeding out the letters because we are using this as a stencil. Apply transfer tape. Here’s a great hack for you: If you don’t have transfer tape available, you can use the back of a piece of iron-on. Remember, it has built-in transfer tape so we just grabbed some from a piece of HTV that we used earlier. Once you have applied the transfer tape, you can remove the backing from your design.
Apply your design to your mini cutting board. Burnish. Remove the transfer tape.
Stencil the open letter with the polyacrylic using a makeup sponge. Apply 3 light coats. Remove the vinyl. Don’t forget to get the centers of the letters too (you might want to use a weeding tool for that). We’re doing a resist technique here so you won’t see any color – the letters will just be a bit shiny.
Lastly, you will stain the cutting board with the Jacobean stain. The rest of the wood will absorb the stain, but where you have applied polycrylic to the letters, it will resist the stain.

This is a perfect Cricut wedding gift idea. You can master a lot of Cricut techniques in this fun project, and I can’t wait to teach them to you. You’ll love the way this Cricut beginner project turns out. If you want a keepsake of the places where some big milestones in your life occurred, this is the project for you.

DIY Relationship Map Plaque

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Font Used:

Regenerate

Supply Links:

Step-by-step Instructions:

Sand, paint, and seal your wood plaque. Allow it to fully dry overnight.
Manipulate your font in the design space.
Screenshot maps of the locations you want. Slice hearts out of the maps and size accordingly. Flatten small hearts where you want them on your map hearts. Refer to the video for a detailed tutorial on how to manipulate this design.
Print, cut, and weed your printable and regular vinyl. Add transfer tape to your regular vinyl.
Clean the wood plaque and align and apply all of your vinyl where you’d like it to go.

DIY Custom Charcuterie Board

September 20, 2022 by Paula W

Charcuterie boards are so trendy right now and they are a beautiful addition to anyone’s home decor. They make a perfect gift and are much easier to make than you might think. We’ll show you how to make a custom charcuterie board that you’re going to love.

DIY Custom Charcuterie Board

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Cut Files/Fonts Used:

Laurel Wreath Design
Accents_13
Betty B
Worthy
Click Clack

Diy Custom Charcuterie Board With Cricut Amazing Cricut Gift Idea 300x250 1

Step-by-step Instructions:

Download the cut files and fonts from Makers Gonna Learn. Import the cut files into Design Space. You’ll find the fonts under System Fonts.
Grab a square from the shape button on the left and size it up to 24”x9.25”. You want to may change the color of it for visualization purposes. You can change the color by going up to the top where it says fill and choosing the color you want on the drop-down.
Open a text box. Type in the text you want – we’re adding an O for our last initial and changing it to the font that we want (Worthy).
Move this letter over to your rectangle to size it for your charcuterie board. Select both layers, go to Align and then Center to get it perfectly lined up.
Add the Laurel Wreath cut file to your canvas. It has several different designs to choose from so you will need to begin by selecting it and then clicking Ungroup on the Layers Panel. Delete any of the pieces you don’t need.
Move the remaining cut file design over to the rectangle below the initial and size it. With that cut file selected, Duplicate. Then choose Flip and Flip Vertically. That piece goes above the initial.
Select the two halves of the design below the initial and choose Group. Repeat with the two halves of the design above the initial. Then you can select all the pieces of your design and Align them.
Open a new text box and type in your desired text. We are using Oakes Family. Change to your chosen font. (We are using Betty B).To kern the font, with the text box selected, we are going up to the top toolbar and decreasing the Line Spacing. If you need to make further adjustments, Ungroup and move the letters as needed.
Now, open a third text box. This time we’re using Click Clack and typing in THE, In a 4th text box and again using Click Clack, we’re typing in the date. Place the word THE and the date where you’d like them near the family name. Highlight all 3 of these layers and choose Align, Center Horizontally.
Next, open the cut file Accents_13. Once again, Ungroup and delete the pieces you don’t need.
Place one of the accent pieces at the bottom right of the text. Then, choose Duplicate and Flip Horizontal. Place this second piece at the top left of the text.
Select all of that text and the two accent pieces and Group. Rotate and size to fit at one end of your rectangle (the charcuterie board). Duplicate it and rotate and size that piece for the other end of the rectangle.
If you were to leave these designs as is, each individual piece (including each individual letter) would cut out separately. So, we’re selecting each section of the charcuterie board (the design on one end, the design in the middle, and the design on the other end), one section at a time, and then choosing Weld. You could actually choose to Weld the whole design as one if you’re really happy with the placement, but this method will leave you with a lot of wasted HTV and will be a larger piece to manage all at once.
Click Make it. You’ll see that Cricut has placed them on 2 separate mats. To save on HTV, we are going to “trick the system” by changing the mat size to 12×24. Then, we’re moving around our design pieces to make the most use of the available HTV. By doing that, we were able to cut out all of our pieces on a piece of iron-on vinyl that is 10” long or less.
Connect to your machine and set the material to everyday iron-on. Place the HTV on your cutting mat and load the mat into the machine to cut.
Weed your design. Remember that HTV comes with built-in transfer tape so we don’t need to add any to this.
Now you can start putting the project together. Make sure the piece of wood and the candlestick holders are stained if you prefer them that way or you can use them as is. We also used a dry brushing technique to enhance the stained look on the board.
After you have stained the wood, you can glue the candlestick holders using E6000 to each of the 4 corners of the wood. Apply the glue around the rim of the candlestick holders and place them down into each corner. Let that sit overnight.
The HTV are now ready to be transferred. Lay down all of them on the piece of wood so you can arrange them just as you would like. Once the EasyPress has preheated, heat your HTV designs starting in the center of a section and pushing out from there. Once heated, be sure to let it cool completely before peeling up the transfer tape.

DIY Santa Stop Here Sign

September 18, 2022 by Paula W

You don’t want Santa to miss your house so this Santa Stop Here sign is just what you need for the holiday season. This is a project we are building from scratch, but don’t let that intimidate you.

If you are uncomfortable with the cutting or don’t have the tools for it, just ask your home improvement center to do it for you.

DIY Santa Stop Here Sign

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Cut File Used:

Santa Stop

Supply Links:

Step-by-step Instructions:

Import the cut file downloaded from Makers Gonna Learn to Design Space.
To create the wooden sign, you are going to want to create an octagon in Design Space and cut it out of cardstock to use as a template for the wood. So, we’ll begin with that.
Grab an octagon shape and duplicate it twice. Now you need to size them. Move one octagon to the other and size it down a little to create a border. Select them both and choose Align Center.
Next, select them both again and Slice. Delete all of the sliced layers you don’t need. All you need is the border layer.
Move your remaining octagon over and size it so that the border is showing. Select both, Align, Center. Select both, Group.
With the cut file, you can see that it’s set up to be used like a stencil. We don’t want that today. Instead, we just want to use the words. So, we need to separate them from the octagon shape.
Select the cut file and separate the words from the octagon by using Contour to remove the shape. Bring the words over to the octagon layer of your sign, click Arrange, and Bring to Front. Then size them accordingly.
Select all layers, Align, Center, and then Group. Go to the Layers panel, select only the words and the border and click Attach. Lastly, select both layers, Align, Center, and Group.
Click Make It. For the words attached to the border piece, you’ll need to choose Everyday Iron-On and choose Mirror. For the plain octagon, you need to set the material to Kraft Board. Place your materials on the mats, load the mats into the machine one at a time, and cut your materials.
Before you apply the cut vinyl, make sure the post and octagon sign piece are stained and have had at least 2 hours – preferably 24 hours – drying time. Also, make sure that all edges and surfaces of your wood have been sanded and are nice and smooth.
The post topper and plaque will be painted in white.
Center the post on the plaque (we’re using it as the sign base) and use the nail gun to attach them together.
Weed your HTV. Remember that you want to leave behind the letters and the border and weed away the rest. Don’t forget to weed out the centers of the letters too. Because this is HTV, it has built-in transfer paper. So, once weeded, you can peel your design up from the mat.
Lay your design down on your stained octagon wooden sign. Using your EasyPress Mini, start in the center and work your way out. You will need to give extra attention to heating the edges of the border. Even on the edges, we like to work from the inside to the outer edge to ensure proper adherence.
Carefully remove the transfer sheet. If any parts begin to pull up, lay down your Teflon sheet and use your EasyPress again to heat that area.
Apply E6000 on the back of the octagon right where you will attach it to the post to secure them both. After that, apply E6000 to the post topper and attach it.

Wood Burned Birth Announcement Sign

September 16, 2022 by Paula W

This wood burned birth announcement sign is the perfect way to commemorate such a special occasion. Use it in baby’s birth announcement photographs for such a special touch. It makes a beautiful decor piece for baby’s room too. We’ll show you how easy it is to make it!

Wood Burned Birth Announcement Sign

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Fonts Used:

Application
Improvement

Supply Links:

Cricut Maker
StandardGrip Mat
Cardstock
Paper Masking Transfer Tape
6.5”x6.5” Stencil Vinyl (can be scrap vinyl and doesn’t matter what color)
Scorch Marker Pro
6” wood rounds
BurnishingTool
PinPen Tool
Drill Bits
Heat gun
Verathen Flagstone Stain

Step-by-step Instructions:

Create stencil in design space using a 6″ circle and the MGL fonts “application” and “improvement”
Cut the stencil out of vinyl
Weed, add transfer tape and remove from the mat
Apply the stencil to wood round
Using scorch marker, completely fill-in stencil
Allow to dry and remove the stencil
Use a heat gun to apply heat to the stenciled area. Move heat gun around periodically until the dark “burnt” look is achieved
Stain wood round
Seal if desired

Wood Burned Camping Sign

September 16, 2022 by Paula W

Today you will learn how to personalize a camping sign with your Cricut. Not only that, but we teach you a method for wood burning with your Cricut that is bound to blow your mind. Enjoy this fun Cricut project inspiration.

Wood Burned Camping Sign

Disclosure: Some of the links below are affiliate links provided for your convenience. This means, at no additional cost to you, we will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

Cut File Used:

The Best Memories Are Made Camping

Supply Links:

Step-by-step Instructions:

Size, cut, and weed your vinyl. This project will need a stencil, so weed the letters and details out. Add transfer tape. See video for detailed instructions on cut file manipulation.
Center and apply the decal to your wood circle, burnish, and remove the transfer tape.
Mix your 1 tablespoon Ammonium Chloride, 5 teaspoons Thick-It, and ½ cup of hot water. Mix and allow to thicken up 3-5 minutes.
Apply a thin layer of the mixture on your stencil moving the paintbrush in an up and down motion, not side to side.
Allow to dry completely then remove the vinyl.
Move the heat gun around the area until it reaches your desired color.
Stain the round, allow to dry, and enjoy!

Wood Burning with Cricut

May 5, 2022 by Paula W

Do you like to make Cricut wood projects? We sure do! So today, we thought we’d teach you one of our favorites: Wood Burning with Cricut. You can’t wood burn with your die cutting machine, but you can certainly use it to make the whole process much qucker and easier.

We’ll show you exactly how to use your Cricut machine to create a design that is perfect for wood burning. Then, we’ll take you through the process you need to follow to burn the design into your wooden project. This is so much fun!

Wood Burning with Cricut

Materials needed:

Instructions:

Contour Out The Parts Of The Design You Dont Need

1 – Download the font and the SVG of the carrot file. Add the carrot file to your canvas in Cricut Design Space. Select the green layer of the design only and choose Contour. Click on the pieces of the Happy Easter to contour it out so that you are only left with the green tops of the carrots.

Carrots And Khloee Design In Cricut Design Space

2 – Add your text and place it as you’d like on your design. Select everything and choose Weld.

3- Measure the available space on the tag. Size your design to fit on it.

Cutting and Weeding Your Design:

4 – Click Make It. Choose On the Mat. Continue. Connect to your machine and select your materials. We used Stencil Vinyl. You can use Permanent Vinyl instead but be really careful with it as it does sometimes pull up the wood. Make sure the wood is well sanded to help prevent that. Cut out your design.

5 – Weed your design. Remove the backing sheet and apply to the wooden tag. Burnish well onto the tag. Slowly remove the transfer tape.

Wood Burning Your Design:

6 – Put on gloves and protective eyewear. Use the spatula to spread some torch paste onto the makeup sponge. Dab on an even coat over your stencil.

7 – Remove the stencil, using your weeding tool to remove the centers of the letters if needed. Allow the torch paste to set for 2 minutes.

8 – Apply heat to your design. Keep the heat gun about 6-10 inches away from the tag while heating. This will prevent scorching of the wood around the design.

Pro Tip: Once you have burned your design completely, place a piece of masking transfer tape or painter’s tape over it to remove any bits of soot. It’s important to do that before staining so it doesn’t smear.

Adding the Finishing Touches:

9 – Stain the tag. Allow to sit for a few minutes and then wipe off the excess.

10 – Add a twine hanger and a twine bow to finish off your project!

Wooden Tag With Khloee And Carrots Wood Burned On It

Cricut Reusable Stencils

September 22, 2021 by Paula W

We love creating DIY Cricut reusable stencils. They are easy to make and they last a long time. Of course you can add designs to surfaces using adhesive vinyl and heat transfer vinyl, but somethings you want that painted, stenciled look.

Your Cricut machine can come in very handy when it comes to making custom stencils. Choose whatever words or cut files you want and make yourself a reusable stencil that you can use for many different craft projects.

Cricut Reusable Stencils

By using craft plastic instead of vinyl for this stencil, you can make it reusable. This is great if you want to make a lot of the same project over and over again – perhaps for a big event or family get-together – or if you’re planning to sell the items.

Remember, with one of our yearly memberships, you get a free commercial license allowing you to use our cut files and fonts on craft projects that you are then going to sell!

Supplies needed:

Cricut Maker 3 (you can also cut this plastic with one of the Cricut Explore series machines too)
Our Favorite Cutting Mats (you want to use a StandardGrip mat that is fairly new and still has quite a bit of tack to it so the plastic will adhere well)
Grafix Craft Plastic
Deep Point Blade and Housing
Easy-Tack
Brayer
Cricut Maker Tool Caddy

Pro tip: For the craft plastic, the thickness we have found that is not only the easiest to cut, but also the best to use for stenciling is 0.07 mm thick.

Cut Files and Fonts Used:

Ballin Font

To make the stencil:

To get started, you need to think about what size blank you will be using for this stencil. If you’re planning to stencil on signs that are 5 inches by 9 inches, you want to use Basic Shapes to pull in a rectangle and size it to those dimensions. This helps you visualize how large to make your stencil.

Add a text box and type in the word you want to use. We suggest making stencils for words that can be used over and over again like “welcome” or “home”. When sizing your word, make sure to have some extra space around it to give you a buffer so you don’t have to be quite as careful with the paint application.

Next, you need to weld your text so that the word becomes one layer. We are going to use Slice and you can only slice two layers at a time. Select both the rectangle and word and choose Slice. Discard the unnecessary slice results.

You might be wondering how you’re going to keep the centers of the letters in place for the stenciling. Here’s our simple craft hack. Grab another rectangle and size it down so it’s quite small. Duplicate it and add one to each of the letters with centers as shown above. Select all of these small rectangles and your stencil layer and choose Weld.

Pro tip: Those tiny rectangles will need to be filled in manually once you have stenciled your design onto the surface.

Click Make It To Send Your Stencil To The Mat

Click Make It. Connect to your machine and choose your material setting – we use the Transparency setting. Increase the pressure to More. It will prompt you to put your Fine Point Blade into Clamp B but we’re going to put in the Deep Cut Blade instead. This will help ensure that we get the best cut possible.

Pro tip: Your machine won’t know the difference between the Fine Point or Deep Cut blade. It can detect the differences between the Adaptive Tools but not the blades.

Place the craft plastic onto the cutting mat. Use a brayer to help it adhere to the mat well. Cut our your stencil. It’s very important then to check your cut before you unload the mat from your Cricut. This is something you should do whenever you use a material that’s out of the ordinary.

You can use your weeding tool to make sure it’s cut all the way through. If it’s not, simply press the Start button again so it will go back and cut again. If you haven’t unloaded the mat, it will cut again in exactly the same place.

Weed your design by pulling up the stencil from the mat. Work slowly and carefully. There may be a few spots that didn’t cut all the way through.

Use True Control Knife To Cut Any Spots That Didnt Cut Well Enough On The Machine

If there are any spots that didn’t quite cut through completely, you can use your True Control Knife to cut them yourself.

Weed away the word so that you’re left with the stencil on your mat. Then, you can carefully peel that up and you’re ready to use it. Spray the back of it with the Krylon Easy-Tack.

Place it on your surface material and now you can stencil your design onto it. We like to use makeup sponges for this. They work really well and are quite inexpensive.

Cricut Infusible Ink on Wood

August 6, 2021 by Paula W

Have you ever tried using Cricut Infusible Ink on wood? When we first heard about it, we were intrigued by the idea. Would it work? Would the results be what we were hoping for?

So, in this tutorial, we are trying out using Infusible Ink on wood surfaces and sharing all of our Cricut hacks for how to have the most successful craft projects possible! Check it out.

Cricut Infusible Ink on Wood

We love sharing our best Cricut tips and tricks with you so that you can make flawless projects with your die cutting machine.

Materials Needed For Infusible Ink On Wood

Supplies Used:

Font Used: Scalloped Monogram

STEP BY STEP TUTORIAL

Working in Design Space

Use A Shape To Mimic The Shape Of Your Sign In Design Space

We’re going to begin in Cricut Design Space. We like to start by creating a shape to mimic the shape and size of the surface we’re working with. In this case, that’s a wooden sign.

Monogram Fonts Available On Makers Gonna Learn

When you download the monogram you want to use, remember that it comes in 3 files. There is one for the center letter, one for the left, and one for the right. You can find more detailed information on working with monograms here.

Place and size the monogram to fit the sign. This is where creating a shape to represent your finished sign can be so helpful.

Working on the letters and sign

We have cut out the letters with chipboard and our knife blade. If you’re working with a Cricut Explore machine, you can always use a thinner material like cardstock or Cricut Kraftboard.

Next, we’re painting the letters so we can apply the glitter to them. Shake off the excess and save for another use.

Pro Tip: You might normally reach for something like Mod Podge to cover the letters and then sprinkle the glitter on top of that. We advise you to use paint as your glue. Choose a paint color that is as close to the color of the glitter as possible. This gives much better coverage and your finished project will look so much more professional.

Place Infusible Ink Facedown On Wooden Sign

Preheat your EasyPress to 400 degrees. Cut a piece of Infusible Ink to fit your wooden sign. Place a piece of paper down on your EasyPress mat to protect it from the ink. Lay the Infusible Ink facedown on the wooden sign.

Use heat resistant tape to hold the Infusible Ink in place so it doesn’t move or curl up while you’re trying to heat it with your EasyPress. Place the EasyPress down and heat for 50 seconds. Give it some good pressure but don’t move the EasyPress.

Wood Sign With Infusible Ink Applied To It

Allow it to cool down. Remove the tape and lift off the Infusible Ink. Note: we didn’t treat the wood with anything prior to applying the Infusible Ink. This was just plain wood and it turned out beautifully.

Pro Tip: You want to work with an unpainted, unstained, unfinished, porous wood so that it will accept the ink well.

Infusible Ink Sheet Next To Wooden Sign With Infusible Ink Applied To It

Important reminder: Remember that the sheet of Infusible Ink will look quite a bit duller than the finished project once the heat has been applied to it.

Glue the letters onto the wooden sign. Add your ribbon and bow and you’re all set!

Easy Wood Burning with Cricut

July 14, 2021 by Paula W

We are so excited about this Cricut hack that we’re going to teach you today. In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to do Easy Wood Burning with Cricut.

Cricut wood projects are some of our favorite crafts to make. For this project, we are making a wooden tray with a really pretty tropical leaf pattern on it. It’s so simple to make! Place your chosen design on a basic piece of wood, do our easy chemical wood burning technique, add a couple of handles, and voila! You’ve got an amazing trendy tray.

Easy Woodburning with Cricut

Not only are we going to show you how to do use this faux woodburning method, but today, we’re going to do matless cutting with regular adhesive vinyl. That’s right! We are not using Cricut Smart Materials today. This is going to be an exciting experiment!

We love testing out Cricut tips and sharing them with you. You’re going to love this one!

Materials we are using:

Cricut Maker 3: https://amzn.to/357R2c9 or Cricut Explore 3: https://amzn.to/3pHRuap
Cricut Smart Permanent Vinyl For Maker/Explore 3: https://amzn.to/3v9klWl
Pin Pen Tool: https://bit.ly/2SCiMlZ
Our Favorite Burnishing Tool: https://bit.ly/33Ejamf
Our Favorite Cutting Mats: https://amzn.to/3pdN1KN
Scorch Marker Pro wood burning marker: https://amzn.to/35wYKfY
Wooden Rounds: https://amzn.to/35wLCrn
Minwax Early American Stain: https://amzn.to/2VTeaGd
Staining Rags: https://amzn.to/3azAJVJ
Vinyl Gloves: https://amzn.to/371mCtR
Sanding Blocks: https://amzn.to/35476Le

SVG we’re using: Makers Gonna Learn Tropical Leaf Cut File

Cricut Woodburning Tutorial

Resize Your Design To Fit The Wooden Surface For The Tray

Working in Design Space

1 – Let’s begin by downloading the tropical leaf cut file from Makers Gonna Learn and uploading it into Cricut Design Space.

2 – Unlock the design by clicking on the lock symbol. Size the pattern to what you need for your tray. In this case, we’re making it 11 1/2 by 8 inches. This is all the work that needs to be done on this design in Design Space!

Cut Vinyl To 13 Inches To Be Able To Use It For Matless Cutting

How to do matless cutting with regular vinyl

3 – Because we want to do matless cutting with our regular Starcraft vinyl instead of Smart Materials, we need to cut it to size. For matless cutting to work, the material needs to be 13 inches wide. We’re using a roll of vinyl that is 12 inches wide, so we’re using our paper trimmer to cut off a piece that is 12 by 13 inches.

Rough Edges From Matless Cutting With Regular Vinyl

As you can see, with this matless cutting using regular vinyl, the edges came out a bit rough. Bear that in mind when it comes to the placement of your design. You don’t want it too close to the edges.

Cutting and weeding your stencil

4 – Click Make It and choose “Without Mat”. Press Continue. Allow your machine to connect. Load materials into machine. We’re using the Cricut Maker 3. Press the Start button when prompted.

5 – Once your design has been cut out, weed it. We found that even without burnishing, it weeded like a dream. If you are working with a mat, we do generally recommend burnishing for easier and more foolproof weeding.

Reminder: you need to weed away the opposite of what you normally would. We’re making a stencil so in this case, we’re weeding away the positive space (the design itself) and keeping the negative space (the area around the design).

Using The Taco Method Apply Transfer Tape To Your Design

6 – Using the taco method, apply a piece of transfer tape to your design. The taco method is a great vinyl hack! It means to gently fold (don’t crease) the transfer tape in half as seen in the photo above. Apply the middle to your design first and then, move your hands to allow each side to lay down onto the design. This is a helpful technique that helps to reduce any air bubbles or creases from forming.

7 – Burnish down the transfer tape to your design. Flip it over and burnish from the back as well.

8 – Using the taco method again, place your design down onto the piece of wood. Burnish well. Peel up the transfer tape.

Use Scorchmarker Pro To Create Woodburned Design

Using the chemical wood burning technique

9 – Color in your stencil using the Scorchmarker Pro marker. Peel up the vinyl stencil.

10 – Use your heat embossing tool to scorch your design. Keep the heat moving over your design.

Once complete attach the handles using the provided screws.

There are a lot of variations you can make on this idea. Instead of a tray, how about a cutting board or charcuterie board? You could stain the board or leave it natural as we did. Seal your project if you wish.