Tips & Tricks on Cutting Small Letters with Cricut

Final product image — What You'll Be Creating

Being able to cut super small things with your Cricut machine is one of the most fun things to do, and it's probably a large reason why many people buy these machines. But it can also be so frustrating when you don't get it right, so I am here to help you to get the best cut and to show you some of the best fonts to use on Cricut for small letters.

There are many different factors to successfully cutting small letters with your Cricut out of vinyl, and so there are also many different things that can go wrong. Some of the factors can include the type of vinyl, the mat you are using, as well as the cut settings you are using.

Difference between vinyls — The same vinyl, different approaches - this shows the difference these techniques can make!

Some of these things will make a very small difference in your cutting project, but those small differences could mean the difference between a good result, and a great result. Other factors and changes will make or break your project when cutting small vinyl letters with your Cricut.

What We'll Cover In This Guide on How to Cut Small Letters on Cricut

Do you have a dirty blade?
Have you checked to see if you have a blunt blade?
Is your mat dirty?
The brayer: a game changer!
Test your cut settings!
What vinyl are you using?
Do you know about weeding boxes?
10+ best fonts for small vinyl cutting on your Cricut

Do You Have a Dirty Blade?

This is the first thing that many people check when it comes to cutting small letters with your Cricut. It is also the easiest thing to check and the quickest one to fix.

When cutting things with your Cricut, whether it's paper or vinyl, little fibres or adhesive from the vinyl end up sticking to the blade, which can affect how you cut small letters on your Cricut. So one of the first things you want to do is to clean your blade.

Blade housing with blade being pushed out — Check how far the blade can extend. This blade also has a lot of debris on it

The best way to clean your blade is to use some rubbing alcohol swabs, so you will need to remove your blade from your machine. Press the top part of the blade housing in, and the blade gets pushed out at the bottom.

Once the blade has been pushed out at the bottom, you can easily clean it with your alcohol swab, or replace it if your blade is old and blunt.

Have You Checked to See if You Have a Blunt Blade?

If your blade is blunt, you will see that the blade kind of "skips" over the vinyl and drags it, and no amount of other changes will improve this. This probably means that it is time to get a new blade. Luckily, you don't have to buy an entirely new blade housing, but rather just buy a replacement blade.

Many people will tell you to pierce a ball of foil to sharpen your blade, but this unfortunately doesn't work in the way most people think it does. What it does do is clean some of the debris off your blade, but it is not nearly as effective as the method that we mentioned before, which is to clean it with rubbing alcohol.

Is Your Mat Dirty?

Many people don't realise that having a mat that isn't very clean can also affect your cuts, and it can turn the best font for small vinyl cutting into the worst! With regular mat usage, little bits of debris, sand, hair, and dust can build up on the mat over time. With little grains landing on your mat, it does create a bit of a tent over that grain, and that means the blade will move a bit when it hits these grains.

Debris on the mat — You can see in the circles some places where there is dirt under the vinyl

Luckily, you can quite easily see when you have something on your mat that will affect your cuts, as that little tent catches the light quite nicely. So you will just need to lift up the vinyl, remove the little culprit, and you are then good to go!

In addition to debris on your mat, a mat that is quite old and isn't as sticky anymore will definitely affect your cut. If you have lost quite a bit of stick on your mat, your vinyl will move around while you are trying to cut, which will definitely compromise how the vinyl cuts. Any movement of the vinyl will mean the blade doesn't cut in the exact place it should, and you will get a wonky cut, which isn't good for intricate cuts!

Very dirty Cricut cutting mat — This mat is verging on too dirty to use for very intricate cuts

The Brayer: A Game Changer!

This is a tool I didn't know I needed until I had one. It is not only a real game changer for paper crafts, but also has an incredible effect on how to cut small letters on your Cricut.

Cricut Brayer — The Cricut brayer is a real game changer when it comes to crafting with a mat!

What this little tool allows you to do is to ensure that the vinyl you are going to cut is completely stuck down to your mat. It has a soft roller on it, which means that it won't scratch the vinyl in any way, but by applying even pressure, you are able to more effectively stick your vinyl down onto your cutting mat.

Test Your Cut Settings!

This is the most important part of cutting small vinyl letters with Cricut, and it will mean the difference between impossible weeding and having your vinyl ripping up while cutting. Test cuts are mandatory when it comes to working with the best fonts for small vinyl cutting on your Cricut.

When you are selecting something to cut, you need to choose a material type, and this material type is linked to a pressure setting in Cricut Design Space. A thinner material like crepe paper will need a lower pressure in order to cut through, and a much thicker material like metallic vinyl will need a much higher pressure setting to cut through.

vinyl showing cuts with different pressure settings — All three of these words have been cut with different cut settings, the lowest at the bottom. The difference between the cuts is small, but they get darker as the cuts go higher up.

When your vinyl isn't cutting through, it means that your pressure setting isn't high enough, and you will need to increase the pressure to cut through properly. If you find that your vinyl moves around too much while it is being cut, then your pressure is too high.

While your machine is connected, you can view the material settings. If you click on the three lines in the top left-hand corner, you can click on Manage Custom Materials and see the different pressure settings for the different materials.

Manage custom materials — Click on the three lines in the top left, and you will find your custom settings

A long list of materials will pop up, and each will have a number to the right of the name—this is the pressure setting. If you use a particular setting and you find that your vinyl is not cutting through, you can either adjust this setting or pick another material type that has a higher pressure setting.

Example of custom material settings — Here are a few examples of vinyl settings and the pressure they use

What Vinyl Are You Using?

Not all vinyls are created equal, so the type of vinyl you use can make a big impact on your project. Each brand and type of vinyl will be slightly different—some are a bit more stretchy than others, some vinyls have a paper backing, and some have a more waxy backing than others. Some of these differences are going to be barely visible to the naked eye, so we may not even think that they are a possible cause of our project not succeeding, but they are.

Because of all of these different factors, you will have different results with the very same cut settings. The Cricut vinyl has been specifically formulated for use with the Cricut machines and tends to produce the best results the most easily.

Three different vinyls — All three of these vinyls are different, and each requires a different approach

Oracal and Grafitack are two examples of widely used brands that tend to be a lot more cost-effective when it comes to working with large volumes of decals, and they can make it a bit more difficult to cut some of the very small letters with your Cricut.

I have found that I have to use different cut settings with the different brands of vinyl I use, and I spend a bit of time when I get a new brand of vinyl to make sure that I have the right cut setting for the best font for cutting small letters on my Cricut.

Do You Know About Weeding Boxes?

When cutting on your Cricut, I find that when it comes time to weeding (removing the excess vinyl), I often struggle when I have quite a few things to cut. Using weeding boxes when cutting small vinyl letters with Cricut really helps!

What this means is putting a box around parts of the text to allow you to weed the text in parts, and not have to remove the entire sheet of excess vinyl around in one go.

10+ Best Fonts for Small Vinyl Cutting on Your Cricut

When looking for the best fonts for cutting small text on your Cricut, there are many different kinds of fonts you can use and approaches you can take. Very often, the very thin and swishy fonts are difficult to cut, but hopefully after following all of these tips and tricks, you will find it as easy to cut very thin fonts.

Script fonts — Many script fonts are very tricky to cut, but with these tips you will be cutting the finest of fonts available!

But if you're wondering where to find the best fonts for small text in Cricut, Envato Elements is a great option. This subscription-based marketplace offers you unlimited downloads for a flat monthly fee! Here are some of the best fonts for small text in Cricut:

1. Swashington (OTF & TTF)

This font is a great introduction to cutting some fonts with swashes, as those are always the parts that challenge cutting some of the best Cricut fonts for small text.

2. Bellanie (OTF & TTF)

If you want to learn how to cut small letters on Cricut, this is a great font to learn on. The flourishes will challenge you a little bit, but it still works nicely at a small scale.

3. Determine (OTF & TTF)

This is one of the best fonts to use on Cricut for small letters as these letters aren't very thick. So if you aren't looking for a challenge, this is a fantastic font to use!

4. Brightshine (OTF & TTF)

This is a particularly challenging yet extremely beautiful font that you can use when you're looking for the best font for small vinyl cutting on your Cricut. The lines are all very thin, with long, wispy flourishes, and it is a very good font to test your skills!

5. Aisollya (OTF & TTF)

When cutting small vinyl letters with Cricut, this will also be another good font for a beginner to try as it is a little bit challenging, but with not too many flourishes, it won't be too challenging.

6. Pathout Script (OTF & TTF)

This is another one of the best fonts for small vinyl cutting if you aren't looking for a challenge. It's great if you need to have a font work easily, and you aren't able to tick or correct all of the boxes we covered in this article.

7. Octavia (OTF)

Give this elegant calligraphy font a try for your next Cricut project. Those extravagant flourishes could be a challenge to cut, but you can also simplify things by not using too many of the ligatures and alternates provided.

8. Simplicity (OTF)

Another great option when looking for the best fonts for cutting small text with your Cricut, this font has simple clean lines and is very thin. So while it doesn't have too many flourishes, it still provides a nice challenge.

9. Halosense (OTF)

This font is particularly challenging as not only does it have many flourishes, but it also is a slightly textured outline, so it will be challenging to cut in a few different ways. This could be the best font to use on Cricut for small letters!

10. Mallicot (OTF & TTF)

Looking for the best Cricut font for small text? This type of font is always a fan favourite for cutting small vinyl letters due to the flourishes and thin, clean, classic lines, and it comes with a few extras too!

11. Adorabelle (OTF & TTF)

With many glyphs and gorgeous flourishes, you could make this font more challenging, but the base of this font is a perfect way of testing out how your machine and cut settings are set up. Definitely, this is one of the best fonts for cutting small letters on Cricut!

12. Harmonie (OTF & TTF)

This could also qualify as the best font for cutting small letters on Cricut as it has nice thick letters, which makes it an easier font to use when cutting small letters out of vinyl.

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Tips & Tricks for Cutting Small Letters With Cricut