Sometimes, when I’m about to cut on my Cameo, I get a bit nervous, Is my machine going to “act up”, will it play nice? Or will I have a frustrating session of wasted materials and tears! (well actually, it’s usually not tears but a swear word or two may be involved!)
However, maybe it’s not my machine but my own choices making my cutting life difficult! The quality of cuts depends on a lot of variables, such as the material used, the quality of cardstock, or how sticky the cutting mat is, or how worn the blade is.
So, my tip today is, if a perfect cut is crucial, select fonts and designs with smoother, more rounded edges – it’s less work for the machine, with less jumping up and down of the blade and changing direction.
Here’s a comparison test. From top to bottom in the pics below, I used 3 fonts :
- Arial Rounded MT Bold – a rounded smooth Sans Serif Font
- Franklin Gothic Demi – A Sans Serif Font that has angular corners
- Times New Roman – A Serif font that has multiple angles and sharp corners.
Here are the results – I cut all three words at the same time, on the same cut settings, with the same card stock and the same blade which has seen a few cuts in it’s life but isn’t quite ready to retire just yet.
Still on the cutting mat:
and removed from the mat:
As you can see the best (near perfect) result is the top rounded smooth font. The middle one isn’t bad, a couple of pulled up corners but usable in a pinch. The bottom cut is pretty bad and I wouldn’t use it with those chewed up corners.
When cutting a rounded design the blade doesn’t have to lift up and down so often which in turn minimizes dragging or pulled up corners and tears and possibly wear and tear on the blade. (Also see my theory here on blade wear & tear)
If you’re looking for a plain and simple Rounded font look no further than Arial Rounded MT Bold. Here it is on a baby Card I made recently.
In the card above I used my Free Pram Print and Cut file – You can find it here. I teamed it with some shapes made with metal die cuts.
Thank you so much for this information Pam. It’s solved a very frustrating mystery for me.
Because I use different types of card stock I always make a test cut before cutting my design, and unfortunately I’ve always used a circle shape for this. Now I know why the circle always cuts beautifully and why the design doesn’t always follow suit.
In future I will be making my test cuts with a triangle, and will make sure my text cut outs have rounded edges.
Hi Jan,
I’m so glad you found this helpful. You are very good doing test cuts on your different materials, I must start doing that more often.- I usually launch right into cutting and waste lots of cardstock that way when I get bad cuts!
How can I thank you enough. I get to come to your site every day and get inspired. I appreciate all your work that you are doing for those of us that are struggling with our equipment and maybe need a little kickstart of our imagination.
Oh Sandy, thanks so much for your kind words. I appreciate all my readers but am very Thankful for all the extra support I get from the regular readers like you. 🙂
Thank you so much, always helping me with your tips. Always learning from you