I’m kicking myself for not thinking of this earlier. I would have saved so much time when cutting designs from Card stock and paper over the years.
So this week the tip I have for you is – Never double cut dotted/perforated lines. Yes that’s it – so simple!
There’s really no need to. Even if you’re using a thick card stock that usually would require a double cut there’s no need to double cut the perforated/dotted lines – a single cut will be enough to score that fold line perfectly.
I’ve stopped checking the “Double Cut” option in the cut settings. Instead, I’ll do a single cut on the entire design including both the solid and perforated lines. Then without unloading the mat (< this is important) I’ll check the cut quality by lifting up a little corner of the card from the mat to check if it’s cut all the way through. If it’s OK, I’ll unload the mat and I’m done. If it needs another pass through the cutter I do this:
- Don’t unload the cutting mat – Leave everything as it is on the mat
- On the Software screen, select the design and ungroup it.
- Select the dotted lines of the design
- Go into the Cut settings and Turn the cut setting on the dotted lines to “No Cut”.
- Re cut the rest of your design.
The amount of time you save by not doing unnecessary cuts more than makes up for the time it takes to change the cut settings.
And as an added bonus there’s less wear and tear on your cutting blade! I have a theory that all the jumping up and down the blade does when cutting dotted lines can dull it quite quickly.
Hope you find this useful 🙂
Great tip. I love these Tuesday tips. Thanks so much😍
WheI I have a perforated line, I also release compound path – I delete eveyother or delete 2 and keep one. It depends on my paper. I definitely delete the two closest one to each end of perferated line.
Thanks so much for sharing! It’s easy to forget that those dashed lines don’t need to be cut through, so I appreciate the reminder!
wow, thank you Pamm for sharing this usefull tip, from now on I’ll be doing this. Thank you