Cricut Print and Cut Hack for Paper Other Than White

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EDITED TO ADD FEB. 9, 2018:  This is the older version of Cricut Design Space. To look at this hack for the Cricut Print and Cut Hack for the updated version, Design Space 5.3 click here.

One of the great things about my Cricut Explore Air 2 is the Print and Cut feature. Essentially, I can print something using my regular printer – Cricut will add registration marks to whatever it is & then put that same item into the Cricut and it will cut for me. However, did you know that it can only do this on white? What if you want to print and cut on coloured paper? Read on to figure out how to get around this with the Cricut Print and Cut Hack.

About Cricut Print and Cut

I had started out easy using this feature to print and cut tags, as well as a cup cozy template. So again, I print them on the card stock using my printer and then insert it into the Cricut, which then cuts around the tags – including the little hole in the centre!  I designed these in Photoshop and saved as a PNG file to upload into the Cricut Design Space software. You can, however, design these right on the Cricut Design Space software.  I love how they turned out – there is no way my hand-cutting skills even compare to these.

Cricut’s Design Space software is limited in size when it comes to Print and Cut. One of the criticisms I have is that when accessing their software using Google Chrome, I am limited to a cut area of 5.5 x 8. Other browsers have similar dimensions. So in other words, there can be wasted space and thus wasted cardstock (although I save those end pieces for small cuts – then you’ll end up with all these little pieces hoping that one day you’ll have something to cut with it!).

Another criticism I have is that the print and cut feature only works on white paper/cardstock. Now the above was done on manilla-coloured cardstock, but I guess it was close enough to white. But what if you want to print on other colours?

Cricut Print and Cut Hack

For my son’s birthday party, I was trying to make a similar tag for his party favours (you can see that post here), but using blue and red cardstock. The Cricut was unable to read the registration marks on the coloured paper. I posted this issue on a Cricut Facebook group and people suggested this clever hack to make it work.

Print your item on both the coloured cardstock, as well as a regular white piece of paper. Place the coloured cardstock onto your mat. Cut the registration marks off of the white piece of paper – you can’t just cut the 3 corners – my Cricut still didn’t like that. I had to cut all the way across.  Then I taped these onto the cardstock. This is what it looked like.

Be sure to tape all around, but not on top of the registration marks – this is to ensure that it lays flat when it is going through the machine. I found that if I didn’t, it had trouble reading the registration marks – so be sure to tape above and below.  When inserted into the Cricut, the machine is able to read the registration marks and think that it is cutting on white paper.

Prior to doing this – be sure to calibrate your machine. I hadn’t done that yet and so the cuts were a bit off. There is a step-by-step procedure for doing the calibration. I had trouble at first because my printer didn’t do the exact size – it was set to “fit to page”. I found it better to print the actual PDF test sheet which you can find here.  Once I did this, subsequent print and cut jobs were perfect.

The tags for the party favours turned out nicely and I was able to do it on the colour of cardstock that I wanted – instead of white.

Another Cricut Print and Cut Hack Example

For another project, my son had to do a short skit for school and wanted masks of Lion King’s Timone and Pumba. I made headbands instead (mainly because of time constraints – he asked me the night before) using the character’s heads. Again, I used Photoshop to create PNG documents of the heads and then uploaded them into Design Space. I printed on brown cardstock so that all my son had to do was colour in the accent parts.

I did the same setup with these. I printed on the brown cardstock, as well as a regular white piece of paper and cut the registration marks out and put them on top of the brown cardstock so that the Cricut would think it was white.

Once cut, my son coloured them. The headbands turned out great – it was a quick and easy project to do – once you know how to do the Print and Cut Hack.

I know that I’ll be using this hack a lot as there are a number of things I’d like to print out, but not necessarily on a light-coloured piece of cardstock. As I go along doing that, I’ll be sure to post it on my Instagram – be sure to follow me so you can see.

Want to remember this Cricut Print and Cut Hack? Be sure to save this to your favourite Pinterest Board