When you buy your cricut or silhouette cutting machine a cutting mat will usually be included with your purchase.
Why is my vinyl sticking to my cutting mat.
Obviously the silhouette cutting mat has to be sticky to keep materials in place while they re being cut by the silhouette.
When the cutting mat is new however it can be too sticky for certain material such as paper and paper backed materials such as adhesive vinyl.
I am using my cricut maker with vinyl and the blue mat to create a poster for my classroom.
You then load the cutting mat and your material into the cutting machine and voila.
What is a cutting mat and why use it to cut htv.
1 scrape your mat to get all the pieces off and it creates a sticky mess like when you are peeling price tags off glass.
My vinyl is not staying on my project after following all the prepping instructions.
The larger letters peeled easily 3 x3 but the smaller sentences less than an inch tall are sticking to the mat and will not come free without lots of effort.
Now you have 3 options.
Most basically a cutting mat is a lined piece of plastic that has one sticky side.
It takes about 24 hours for the adhesive to fully set onto a surface.
Why you need to restick your cricut cutting mat.
These mats are usually made from rubber and are very tacky to the touch allowing you to stick your paper vinyl or whatever material you re using to the mat allowing it to slide evenly through your machine and to be.
Sometimes even after prepping the surface of your project with rubbing alcohol or smoothing a wooden surface vinyl takes some time to adhere.