Weeding with Scotch Tape

I’m a little giddy today!  I figured out a new trick on how to weed those small little pieces of heat transfer vinyl!!  I’m so excited!  I’ve always had a hard time with the little tiny circles and lines and when I do get the vinyl out it sticks to another piece or my fingers.  I’m not sure if others do this, but I found out that weeding with Scotch tape works amazing for these small pieces of HTV.

I was making a shirt for my sons first day of kindergarten (click here for t-shirt tutorial) and the car he picked had some tiny little pieces of heat transfer vinyl to weed in the wheels.

After I cut out the heat transfer vinyl with my Cricut Explore One Cutting Machine I weeded around the car and the few big pieces inside.

I was left with this:

I was looking at all the small pieces and was wondering if there was an easier way of weeding them than with the weeding tool.  I put some contact paper over it and it didn’t do anything.  So I grabbed my scotch tape and it pulled out the tiny pieces!!  I just put a small piece over the sections I wanted out, rubbed it down with my finger, and slowly pulled up the tape.

Look at that!  All the little pieces came up and stayed put on the tape. If some didn’t come up then I would weed with my Cricut Tools Craft Weeder or put more tape down. No more getting stuck on a different part of the vinyl backing or stuck on my fingers!

Here’s a picture of the tape with those itty bitty pieces on it.  I do have to warn you that it might not work well on really thin intricate pieces or letters.  I tried to do this very elaborate weeding design and it worked okay but I had to pull up the tape very slowly so it didn’t pull the really thin pieces with it.

Let me know if it works for you!!  I tried this method on regular adhesive vinyl and unfortunately it didn’t work.  The scotch tape was too strong and pulled everything up.  So for now it works amazing on HTV though!