The Transfer Tape That Finally Got My Decals Straight

Bev showed me a decal on her water bottle at church in February, and I spent most of that service looking at it instead of the bulletin. A small black name, cut clean, sitting flat as paint. I asked how she did it and she said a machine and a little practice. That was all the explanation I got. In March I ordered the Cricut Joy Xtra, a roll of black Sooez vinyl, a tiptopcarbon weeding set and a roll of YRYM HT transfer tape, all in one go, before I had cut anything in my life.

I am 58, retired from the school office, and the machine sits at the left end of a six foot folding table in the spare bedroom. Laptop in the middle. A plain pressing mat at the right end. A wire shelf beside the table holds the rolls, and I weed under a desk lamp with my reading glasses on. That table was already in the room. I just cleared the boxes off it.

Here is the part I did not understand at the start, and I have since explained it to two friends at church. The vinyl you cut is not what goes on the door. It is a sandwich. You weed away the pieces you do not want, lay a sheet of tape across what is left, rub it down, and lift. The design comes up with the tape and goes down on the project as one piece. Without the tape you are carrying twelve separate letters across the room in your fingers and hoping for the best.

The roll I bought is 12 inches wide and 50 feet long, medium tack, with a clear face so you can see your design through it. The listing says it lifts cleanly without leaving a sticky film behind on the vinyl, and that the half inch grid lines printed on the tape let you measure and cut a piece without waste. Eight months on, I am about halfway through the roll. For the first six of those months I ignored the grid entirely.

Then September came and the church office asked for lettering on their door. Two words. CHURCH OFFICE. Twelve letters in one row, and they had to sit level, because that door is the first thing a person reads walking down the hall. I cut a length of YRYM HT, laid it over the letters, and for the first time lined a grid line up with their tops. Then I rubbed the whole sheet down with an old gift card, corner to corner, and pulled the backing back slowly.

Twelve letters in one row, sitting level, because the grid did the measuring and I did not have to trust my eye.

Medium tack means what it sounds like. The tape does not grab the vinyl on its own. You put it down, and then you rub. Firmly, from the middle outward, with a card, and twice over if the design has thin strokes. Skip the rubbing and you will lift a letter that did not come up with the rest. That is not the tape failing. That is a step you cannot skip.

The one complaint I have is small. The roll wants to unroll itself on the shelf. Mine lives upright in a plastic bin with a rubber band around the middle, and that is the end of it. Laid down flat and left loose, it will slowly open itself into a curl, so stand it up and keep it closed.

The other thing the grid does is save tape. Count the half inch squares and you know how long a strip you need before you cut. Now I count out what I need, cut on the line, and the rest of the roll stays rolled. That is how 50 feet has lasted eight months of a few projects a month.

That tape has carried house numbers for my neighbor Ruth and a run of small labels. It has not left a film on anything I have put it on. It also will not save you on a curved surface. Work from the middle outward there, because the grid only helps on a flat surface.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you to buy the tape in the same order as the machine, not three projects later. I would tell you the grid is the real reason to pick this roll over a plain one, and then I would tell you the truth, which is that I ignored the grid for six months, placed everything by eye, and thought I was doing fine. I was doing fine. The church office door is the first thing I have made that looks like somebody measured it, and all I did was follow one line.

I would also tell you not to expect the tape to rescue a design that was cut wrong. It carries what you weeded. If a letter is missing, it is missing. And keep an old gift card in the mug with the weeding tools, because the rubbing is the part that decides whether the whole job works.