How to cut Shrink Plastic with Cricut Maker 3

Cutting shrink art plastic with a cutting machine can speed up your creative process. Here I share how I cut shrinkies with my Cricut Maker 3 ― mostly for my own notes, but I’m happy to share!

Option #1: Using existing material settings

If you’re not keen on diving into custom settings, this works fairly well.

Quick summary

• Select the Acetate setting, with “More” pressure.
• Use the strong or standard grip mat (purple or green).
• Stick the shiny side of the plastic down onto the mat.
• Use a deep point blade.

Note: For thin clear or pre-coloured shrink plastic, don’t use “more” pressure as it can start to cut into the mat.

Detailed steps

When ready to cut a design in Cricut Design Space, hit Make. Keep the Material Load Type selection to On Mat and Continue.

Set the Base Material to Acetate, and the Pressure to More.

It will instruct you to load the Fine Point Blade into Clamp B, but load a Deep Point Blade instead.

Load either a Strong Grip Mat or a Standard Grip Mat – with the shiny side of the shrink plastic down.

Start the cut.

Unload and slowly peel the plastic off the mat. Some points won’t be cut all the way, so press on the shapes while you lift the excess parts up.

Be careful, because the plastic does like to snap and you might lose some cut outs.

Peel the cutouts from the mat. If some are left on the weeded piece, push to snap them out too.

Use a toothpick to poke small holes out.

Shrinkies are ready to colour and bake.

SVG Templates for download

PDF & SVG Shrink Art Sakura Templates

Make your own Sakura cherry blossom jewellery or accessory with shrink art plastic with these template files.You can use the PDF file to print, trace, and cut out with a pair of scissors and hole punc

buymeacoffee.com

PDF & SVG Assorted Flower Templates for Shrink Art Jewellery

Make your own Flower Jewellery with shrink art plastic with these template files.You can use the PDF file to print, trace, and cut out with a pair of scissors and hole puncher. Or you can use the SVG

buymeacoffee.com

PDF & SVG Shrink Art Floral Earrings Template

Make your own Floral Earrings out of shrink plastic with these template files.This download accompanies my blog post at https://keimade.com/shinkart-white-flower-earrings/Instant download includes:- P

buymeacoffee.com

PDF & SVG Shrink Art Blueberry Charm Template

Make your own Blueberry Earrings out of shrink plastic with these template files.This download accompanies my Blueberry Earrings Project Notes at https://keimade.com/shrinkart-blueberry-earrings/Insta

buymeacoffee.com

PDF & SVG Shrink Art Tulip Earrings Template

Make your own Tulip Earrings out of shrink plastic with these template files.This download accompanies my Tulip Earrings Tutorial at https://keimade.com/shrinkart-tulip-earrings/Instant download inclu

buymeacoffee.com

Option #2: Custom material settings

I tried a few more experiments to nut out what settings would be better for cutting 0.3mm frosted shrink plastic sheets with my Cricut Maker 3. Essentially, I wanted it to be easier to pop the shapes out, while avoiding it cutting into the mat.

How to create custom material settings

When selecting a material, you can add a custom setting. It’s a it’s a bit hidden, so check out this slide show:

My experiments

While the Acetate setting did cut OK with the “more” pressure setting, no one knows exactly how much the “more” increments the default value by. (Cricut’s official response is that it varies by material and by each machine.) When I look up Cricut’s acetate material, it’s like those transparent pillow box material; it’s definitely thinner and flimsier than frosted shrink plastic.

Looking at the default materials list, there is also something called Plastic canvas and the rather vague Plastic packaging.

Material	Pressure	Passes	Blade
Acetate	280	x2	Fine Point
Plastic canvas	345	x3	Deep point
Plastic packaging	345	x6	Deep point

Cricut also says:

“Thicker or denser materials may not always require more pressure, but may require a multi-cut in order to cut through completely”

Cricut – Tips for creating custom settings 

So the experiment values I started with were:

	Pressure	Multi-cut	Blade
Puraban Test 1	310	x2	Deep point
Puraban Test 2	280	x3	Deep point

Results & Best manual settings for shrink plastic

Here are the results of 5 test settings and which one worked best.

	Pressure	Multi-cut	Blade	Result
Puraban Test 1	310	x2	Deep point	OK
Puraban Test 2	280	x3	Deep point	Not as good
Puraban Test 3	350	x2	Deep point	OK
Puraban Test 4	350	x3	Deep point	Great – mat got scored
Puraban Test 5	330	x3	Deep point	Great

The winner

	Pressure	Multi-cut	Blade
Puraban Test 5	330	x3	Deep point