Since March is National Craft Month, I’m back with another DIY using my Circuit Explore Air. One of my favourite things about my Cricut machine is how versatile it is! Seriously, you can make so many amazingly different things with it. For today’s craft, I’ll be using a material that I haven’t featured on the blog before: adhesive foil.
If you’re not sure what a Cricut machine is here is a little refresher:
Cricut machines are personal cutting machines, aka superheroes, that can cut a variety of different materials such as paper, vinyl, craft foam, iron-on transfer, faux leather, window cling and so much more. They can also write and score materials and come with access to a web-based program called Design Space that houses over 50,000 images and 800+ projects. You can also upload your own designs if you are computer-savvy.
For today’s DIY, we are going to be making a series of metallic geometric coasters:
I love how simple and chic these are, and they were so easy (and affordable) to make too! I picked up the coasters from Ikea for under $4 CAD and I already had the Cricut supplies.
For this DIY, here’s the entire breakdown of what you’ll need:
- 4 quark coasters
- Any Cricut machine
- One Cricut mat
- The Cricut basic tool set
- Adhesive foil
- My cut files
The first step is to measure your coaster to find out the area you are working with. If you’re using the same ones as I did from Ikea, your workspace area is 4×4 inches.
Launch the Cricut Design space by visiting www.cricut.com/design in your web browser or by launching the app on your tablet/mobile device.
When the page has loaded, select create a new project > upload image and select the cut files provided. Once the image is finished uploading, select simple image > continue.
On the next screen you can select the areas of the image you want to delete/make transparent. Because this file is a .png, this step is already done so you can just click continue and save the image as a cut file.
Insert the image and resize it to be 4×4”. Once that’s complete, click continue and we will move on to cutting! Remove the protective sheet from your cutting mat, and place your adhesive foil on top, using the scraping tool to smooth out any air bubbles.
Next, turn the dial on your Cricut machine to custom material. On your computer/mobile device, select adhesive foil from the drop down menu. Slide the mat into the machine and press the load button, followed by the go button once it begins flashing.
Once the machine is finished cutting, press the load button again to unload the machine.
Now we need to remove all of the negative space from our cut design using the Cricut basic tool kit. This process is called “weeding”.
Once that is done, cut a sheet of transfer paper and place it on top of your design, pressing firmly. Remove the design from the mat and then peel off the back.
Carefully align the design to the coaster. Once you’re happy with the position, press down firmly and use the scraping tool to smooth out any air bubbles. Once that is done, slowly peel back the transfer paper and repeat this process for each design.
Tada, that’s it! I think all 4 coasters took me about 10-15 minutes to make. Overall, I found this project to be the easiest one I’ve done yet and I really enjoyed working with the adhesive foil.
Have you worked with adhesive foil before? If so, let me know what you made! I can’t wait to try making some more stuff with it.
Happy crafting!
This post contains affiliate links and while I received complimentary product for free from Cricut, all of the opinions expressed in this post are of my own.
