Cricut for painting masks

I have not used a Cricut for that, I had a co-worker who had one and she used to make cheap vinyl decals for us at work, sometimes she would use the low-tack sheets and make her own decals for everyones locker.  It seemed to work pretty good, nice clean edges.

Hi Don,

Haven't used a CriCut but do have a Pazzles Inspiration and, yes, I have used it to make masks. Insignia on a Corsair I've posted somewhere here were done with cut masks The smallest I've done, though, is the US Army masks for the bottom wing of a 1/48 P-40B - they're about 0.5" tall -  I built some time ago. Honestly though it gets used more for making vinyl trim and larger paint masks for my large model RC flying buddies. It is a nice tool to have at your disposal though and I'm delighted to have it when needed. P-40 pic follows - the US ARMY is masked and airbrushed.

Thanks, Bick. I had not heard of the Pazzles thing. I'll have to look into it.

Don, You're welcome. My daughter is into scrap booking and made me aware of it. Ads said it will cut balsa and I thought it might be great for the stick'n'tissue stuff I do. It does cut balsa but it takes 3 or 4 passes and, as such is slower than the tried and true razor blade. It is great for masks though. Just a heads up if you do pursue a vinyl cutter: you can buy adhesive backed vinyl from the machine manufacturers but I've found removable shelf vinyl about the same thickness, and it cuts as well and it's only a couple bucks for a large roll at WalMart. Works great for paint masks.

Hey, that is a great idea. I cover my workbench with white Contact, so always have a roll around.

How do you make the layout for the mask? Would be especially nice for masking canopies.

Hi KWH,

My vinyl cutter (Pazzles), and I think most others, come with some basic design software - the consumer models mostly oriented to scrap booking. You can do some accurate layout work with the included software but, depending on the software, you can import Adobe Illustrator,  PDF or DXF, SVG etc and cut directly from the imported file. For fonts, the software uses all fonts on your computer - for the P40 I used Amarillo USAF for example.. I've not done canopy masks but would think that would best be done in CAD program then imported. Like all graphic editing programs there is a learning curve.

My wife has the Quickuts Silhouette and she has cut me some masks.  She did some for some wheels I was wanting to paint.  It turned out to not be a good application of this trick, and I ended up being very successful free-hand painting them.  As others have indicated, you can import pictures into the supplied 'drafting' software and or modify your own drawings.  You can also create things from CAD software and import some of it, but the learning curve is not trivial.  

I think she used to have one of the Crickuts but got rid of it because it acted kind of flakey.  It may be because she was working it from her MacBook Pro, but the Silhouette works much better.

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

CrashTestDummy

<BIG SNIP>

I think she used to have one of the Crickuts but got rid of it because it acted kind of flakey.  It may be because she was working it from her MacBook Pro, but the Silhouette works much better.

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas

Very good point, Gene. The 'original' Cricut did not have software to allow one to draw and cut their own designs; it used stock 'modules that had certain designs in RAM that you plugged into the machine. AS such, it didn't need a PC to work. OK for scrappers I guess but not useful for modelers. One of the reasons I got the Pazzles BUT the Pazzles only runs on a PC and I'm on a Mac so had to create a 'bootcamp' partition to use it. The new Pazzles runs on a Mac but???? BTW one of the great uses I've made with mine is to cut various size small circles out of WalMart vinyl and use them for wheel masks and the flexible nature of the vinyl makes for great masks. Sorry yours didn't work out.

Hey Bick, that's okay, in this particular instance, wheel masks were really a bad idea.  I thought I needed them because I was painting Alclad.  It turns out for small areas, Alclad will brush quite nicely.  

Gene Beaird,

Pearland, Texas