5 Quick Tricks to Waste Less & Weed Faster

Time and money are easily two of the most valuable things when it comes to a profitable HTV business. Everyone wants to be able to produce products as quickly as possible for as little money possible. Today we’re sharing a few tricks of the trade to utilize the most of your material and weed your designs faster!

Trick #1: Weeding Box

A weeding box is a cut line that closely borders a design around the outside edge. This allows for two things:

1. Confines the weeding space in order to waste as little material as possible.
2. Makes finding a corner to start weeding easier and therefore faster.

Weeding boxes are great for most any project, but they really come in handy for cutting large runs of the same design or preventing breakage of thin intricate areas, such as a script font, of a design.

Rolling or pinching HTV helps to see the cut lines. It’s easier to see the weeding box than the individual text.

The Siser Weeder is a necessary tool for the swiftest weeding!

How to Add a Weeding Box in Cricut Design Space:

Select “Shapes” from the tool bar on the left and choose a square. Right click the square and select “Move Backward” until you can see the square below all your objects in the right panel. Then you can size your square to closely fit the objects inside. To get your weeding box to appear on the same cutting mat as your other objects they will need to be the same color.

But even if the objects are the same color, Design Space will  ungroup anything that isn’t welded or attached together. So be sure to Weld or Attach before going to the “Make It” screen. Once on the “Make It” page, don’t forget to check the Mirror Image (for iron-on) box!

How to Add a Weeding Box in Silhouette Studio:

Select the square tool on the right tool bar. Left click and drag a box around your objects. You can always go back and tighten it up by dragging the box sides closer to your objects.

How to Add a Weeding Box in ScanNCut Canvas:

Select “Basic” on the left tool bar to display a list of basic shapes. Click the square and it will be placed on your mat. Use your mouse to arrange the weeding box and adjust the size.

Trick #2: Nesting

Nesting refers to the strategic way you place your cut file on the mat to utilize the least amount of material possible. There are a lot of ways to do this and it really comes down to what works best for your design and the piece of HTV you’re cutting. You can line everything up at the top or strategically place them to take up the least space in a corner.

While this can be the most material efficient way to cut your designs keep in mind that after weeding you will need to cut the carrier sheet to separate the objects, so you can rearrange them.

Trick #3: Heat Press Weeding Trick

The heat press trick works for materials with pressure sensitive (sticky) carriers. Heat up the lower platen of your heat press then lay your transfer directly onto the warm surface to weed. The heat will soften the adhesive and allow you to pull the material quickly with less resistance. This trick can easily be adapted if you’re working with a home iron. Heat up your ironing board with the iron and then weed directly on top of the heated area.

This trick cut Joe’s weeding time in half! Check out the Heat Press Weeding Trick in the video below.

Trick #4: Carrier Sheet Scrap Catcher

Keep a clean work space by re-purposing a scrap piece of carrier sheet. As you weed small pieces and cavities in your design you can easily keep them confined by sticking them to a scrap carrier sheet. This keeps any bits of heat transfer vinyl from accidentally getting re-stuck to your design and makes clean up quick!

Keep in mind that the carrier sheet must be sticky for this trick to work. A static carrier sheet will not have the same results.

Trick #5: Reverse Weeding

Reverse Weeding can be helpful when working with an intricate design on Siser Print and Cut materials. Joe shares the Reverse Weeding Technique in this blog post.

Which of these tricks is most useful to you? Let me know in the comments!