How to Easily Apply Cricut Foil on Printable Vinyl!

Learn how easy is to apply Cricut foil on printable vinyl to create shiny and beautiful stickers or home decor items!

As you can probably guess from all my recent tutorials, I am a little in love with Cricut’s new foil transfer kit!

I absolutely adore how it can add extra shine to my projects. It just really kicks everything up a notch and it’s so easy to use!

To learn all about it, make sure to check out my full post all about the Cricut foil system. I also have free SVG files specifically designed to use with the foil tip so make sure to hop over there too.

Last week I was so excited that I was able to apply the foil to a reverse canvas but adding foil to printable vinyl has been high on my list to try.

There are so many ideas floating around in my head of all the ways to use Cricut’s print and cut with the foil and one of them was to just make an easy small decor sign.

I happened to find this cute blank easel board at the Dollar Tree a few weeks ago that was begging to be customized and it ended up working perfectly. Easy, cheap and shiny – my kind of project!

I did learn a few things about using foil with printable vinyl along the way so hopefully I’ll save you some trials! Ok, let’s get started!

Materials Needed for Foiled Printable Vinyl

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links from Shareasale, Cricut, Awin, CreativeFabrica, and Amazon.com. I receive a small commission at no cost to you when you make a purchase using my links (purple text). As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

• printable vinyl
• Cricut foil transfer kit
• Cricut Explore Air 2 or Cricut Maker
• Dollar Tree wipe off wood easel
• color printer

Designing in Cricut Design Space

Let’s first talk about how to go about changing everything in Cricut Design Space to print and foil. If you need additional help with CDS, make sure to check out my Design Space 101 tutorial series.

Once you are on a new canvas, insert an image. If you want to use the same one I used, simply type in #M187679B in the search bar.

An ideal image for using foil on printable vinyl is a multi layer image with the top layer mostly thin lines or outlines. I changed my filter to Multi and searched through Thanksgiving images.

After you insert it, click on Ungroup. You’ll see all the different layers in the Layer Panel. This particular image has 4 layers and the top layer is pretty much the outlines and extra lines on the leaves.

Click on the top layer and then change the Linetype to Foil. I used the fine tip.

Now we need to convert the bottom three layers so they print. I find it easiest to just hide the foil layer by clicking on the eye in the layers panel. (Or you could just move it out of the way).

Then select the other three layers by putting your cursor around all of them and then click on Flatten.

You’ll notice the image changes some and the layers panel now only has one layer that says Cut/Print. Now you can unhide the foil layer.

For me the layer I unhide is now behind the flattened image, so I just clicked on it in my layers panel and then clicked on Arrange-> Send to Front.

I need to resize mine smaller so I selected all of the layers and clicked on Group to keep them all together. Then I dragged the double arrow to make the image smaller.

Click ATTACH so Cricut will know to foil on top of the image and cut out the flattened image.

I ended up sizing it to 3.76″x 4.519″ to fit on the small black board easel.

Make sure to Save the project and then click Continue. Nothing needs to be done on the prepare screen.

Once you continue on to the Cut screen, CDS will automatically tell you to send it to a printer. A Print setup box will pop up. Make sure the Add Bleed is toggled on (or green).

Then add a piece of printable vinyl in your printer and click on Print. The image will print along with a black rectangle that the Cricut uses to read where the image is.

I let the printed image to dry a bit to ensure it wouldn’t smudge.

Applying Cricut Foil on Printable Vinyl

So now it’s ready to apply a Cricut foil transfer sheet to the printable vinyl where the image has printed.

I do have a quick process video of all these steps so make sure to watch it at the top or the side.

I like to turn my Cricut Explore Air 2 wheel to custom and then search Printable Vinyl in the drop-down menu of CDS.

Once the printable vinyl is dry, place it in the top left corner of a cutting mat.

So this is where it got a little tricky!! I messed up my first time so you don’t have to!

The first time I applied the foil transfer sheet like normal but some of the white tape was on top of the black rectangle. I thought maybe it could just read the corners… it didn’t… it gave me an error message.

My mat wasn’t all that sticky so I taped down the corners of my printable vinyl with some blue painter’s tape. Then I placed a piece of gold transfer foil so it was about 1/4 -1/3 inch away from each black line side and top.

Trial 2… Since there wasn’t enough room for a full piece of tape I used my trimmer to cut the tape in half lengthwise.

Then I placed the skinny piece of tape on the top edge of the foil and right below the black line. Then I cut off the bottom of the foil so that it would fit inside the box and applied tape to that side.

Then I applied tape to the sides so that all of the tape was inside the black line that Cricut needs to read. You want it as close as possible so you are not covering any of the image underneath with the tape.

Insert the foil housing unit with which ever foil tip you chose. I put in my tip with one line for fine tip. Make sure your rollers are pushed to the sides.

Load your mat and push go. The amazing foil tip will get to work! This was a pretty intricate design so it took about 10 minutes or so to foil.

This is what the foil looks like when it’s all done. Isn’t it so cool?

Once the Cricut is done with the foiling step it will pause and you’ll get a pop up on your computer. It’s now time to remove the foil transfer sheet, but make sure you don’t unload the mat.

Pull all the tape up along with the gold transfer sheet.

Swap out the foil housing with the fine cut housing and blade and click on the blinking light to start the cutting process. Look at that shininess!!

The Cricut will cut all the way around the foiled image.

Unload the mat when you’re done and admire all the gorgeous foil outlines! I stared at it for a while, it’s just so fun and shiny!

Now it’s time to apply it to whatever you want. As I mentioned before, I used this cute easel board from the Dollar Tree.

Peel the sticker from the printable vinyl back and apply it to the board.

All done! I love the contrast on the black background and I can easily move it to different parts of my house whenever I want.

The board has three legs to stand up on. I love Dollar Tree Cricut crafts!

Seriously gorgeous, right??

I’m in love!

Sorry, one more picture! I want you to see all the shiny parts!

There are so many possibilities for making easy DIY decor with printable vinyl and foil! My next step is to try this method to add shininess to my Cricut magnets.

If you’d like to save this tutorial on how to apply foil to printable vinyl, simply hover over the top left of the image below and PIN It now!

Thanks for stopping by and have a creative day!