My friend let me borrow her Serenade cricut cartridge that she got with her black cricut expression.  I decided since I have metallic gold vinyl that I would cut a bird cage from the Serenade Cricut Cartridge.  I also had some left over room on the 12×12 piece of vinyl so I added two different Christmas ornaments that I thought would look pretty cut out in the gold.

I get asked a lot where I buy my vinyl.  I buy it at www.uscutter.com. The Oracal 631 vinyl is the same exact vinyl that Provocraft sells (2) 12×24 sheets for $9.99.  The metallic gold that I have used is a little bit more expensive then the regular colored vinyl.  It is  $26.99 for a 24″ x 10″ roll of metallic gold vinyl.  They have flat rate shipping fee of $9.99 per order.  On every roll of vinyl that I have ordered I have been able to cut 33 12×24 sheets from it.  What I do is order vinyl with my friend.  We pick out the colors together and then split the cost and divide the rolls when they come.  That way we get more colors for our money and save a lot on shipping since it is all flat rate on one order.  If you decided to order just the metallic gold roll of vinyl.  $26.99+$9.99=$36.98/33=$1.12 per 12×24 sheet and that is way cheaper then the “Provocraft” vinyl and it is the best deal that I have been able to find.  The last order my friend and I placed was for 9 rolls of vinyl and they each came in there own box as packaged by the manufacture and then repackaged in a larger box.  Every single roll of vinyl arrived in perfect condition.

Here is the vinyl on my 12×12 cricut mat after I cut my design.  (Sorry it is kind of hard to see.)  For the perfect vinyl cut you want to do the kiss cut.  Kiss cut means that you cut the vinyl top layer but not the paper backing that the vinyl is stuck to.  To achieve this your blade depth should be set on 6, your pressure should be on 2, (speed I had set on max).

The next step is to weed away all of the extra vinyl that is not part of the design.  I find it easiest to leave the vinyl adhered to the cricut mat and weed it that way.  I just use a Martha Stewart craft knife to poke the pieces I want to remove and kind of lift them off and pull them away from the design.  This is what it looks like after it is weeded.

The ornament on the left is from the Christmas Cheer cricut cartridge.

The Ornament on the left is from the Christmas Cartridge.

The bird cage is from the Serenade cricut cartridge.

You can buy transfer tape to lift the vinyl off the backing and adhere to your desired location.  I just use a roll of clear contact paper that I got from Wal-Mart.  It was less then $5.00 for a huge roll and it works just fine for me.  I am going to wait until daylight tomorrow to put these up.  I just love the color of the bird cage and how it turned out.  The gold sparkle really does not show up well in the picture but it is very pretty.

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