Have you ever looked at one of your manual dies and thought- “DANG! I wish it was bigger!” or “I wish I could use this thin-ruled die to cut out thick materials!” The truth is, sometimes manual dies (thin-ruled and steel-ruled) have limitations. But if you have a digital die-cutting machine like the Cricut Maker, you can work around this by digitizing your manual dies- and then you can really get your money’s worth out of them. T
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Just a reminder that all of your images you turn into cut files should be for YOUR PERSONAL USE. Selling the new cut file or items made from it violate copyright.
The process takes a few minutes, but it’s totally worth it to be able to resize your favorite image and be able to cut them on demand using your Cricut Maker or Cricut Explore!
I made this video so you could see how to do it step by step.
Here’s the bullet list, if that helps:
- Die cut your image from black paper.
- Glue securely to white paper.
- Take a photo with your smartphone.
- Upload that photo to your computer.
- Open Design Space & start a new project.
- Upload your new image.
- Select “complex image” and use the “advanced” control to set the colors to 2.
- Use your cursor to select the spaces (white areas) to cut away. When they are eliminated you will see a checkerboard.
- Use the eraser tool to eliminate any areas that seem “dirty” or are ragged.
- Continue to save as a “Print then cut” image.
- Insert your newly digitized image onto your mat.
- REMOVE THE GRID LINES by double-clicking on the top left-hand corner of the mat.
- Screenshot the area around your image, cropping as closely as you can.
- Now- REPEAT– upload a new image (the screenshot)
- Select “complex image” and once again cut away any white areas.
- Save as a “cut image.”
- Delete your first upload as you no longer need it.