Cutting leather with the Cricut Explore!

Whew today has been a learning experience. Its been advertised how universal that the Cricut Explore is that it can even cut leather. Well I have been wanting to put my new machine to the test so I thought what better way to do so then to cut some leather. I frequently do leather projects with the cub scouts so I have lots of scraps laying around. I started with a nice thin rectangle piece that I actually purchased from Joann's just for this exploration. I have my usual tooling leather but I didn't really  believe it would cut so I erred on the side of caution and bought this.

My first lesson learned was don't cut the leather fuzzy side down. It basically ruined my mat and no amount of scraping has gotten the fuzz up. I am going to try washing it and see if that revives it but thankfully I keep spares around.

 I also did not attempt to cut this using the regular blade although technically in the settings it says you can, I opted for the deep cut blade based on what I could find on others that have attempted it.

In no way would I say this was an easy project! I went through several tries but hopefully I will save you some!

 

This is the piece from Joann's and it only cut cleanly when it was laid smooth side down. I also was trying to cut it on the leather settings in custom and even on the light setting it wouldn't work. I switched to the straight fabric setting and couldn't get a cut all the way through. On a piece from my scraps that was similar weight I found that if I went 1 click to the left on the dial between fabric and poster board I got a 90% cut.  

 

 

With this cut I have to pull it out at the crevices or do a second cut. I did attempt the second cut but as I experienced before (even with a new mat) this lighter leather lifted up and then was jamming. So I just trimmed at the corners. Things to try again would be a stronger hold mat or going one more click over on the wheel to try and get it on the first pass.

 

 

So now we know the light leather cuts what about that thicker leather? I took a deep breath said a little prayer and sent it through the machine on the heavy leather setting.

I was able to get it cut but with some effort. It took about 6 passes through the machine. Then I started to play with the settings and adjusted the pressure. There was a lot of lint from the multiple cuts. So I tried again since I didn't break the machine!

 

 

 This was a single pass trough the machine with the blade cutting 4x I believe. Again it wasn't perfect but it didn't take 6 tries this time. So I think I will attempt it again with a different design and adjust the pressure a little more.

Now you know that the Cricut CAN successfully cut leather! If you want to attempt this I would suggest you visit Tandy Leather if you have one nearby they usually have bags of scraps you can buy reasonably and I believe you can even order online. It's a little more reasonable that your local craft store for leather usually. You may also want to invest in a brush or something to clean out your machine, there was quite a bit of lint in and around my machine but I blew most of it out pretty easily without any cans of air etc.

If your wondering why they are all Mickey heads, we have a trip planned to Disneyland soon and I like to make my own arrival gifts for the kiddos. So the plan is to make mickey leather bracelets for them to sport! The three head one isn't bog enough for the kids wrists but I like it so I may turn it into a necklace for me!



*This post is not sponsored by any company. The views/experiment/results are my own and may differ based on your materials. There may be affiliate links to Amazon that I receive a percentage of sales in order to purchase products and continue bringing you these posts!