Vinyl Cut
First you need to pick out an image that you can make into 3 different colored layers. Once you find your image save it into your drive, after that open it up in illustrator on a 12"x 12" background and start working on it. In order to do that, to make it easier, make the image a vector image. The start clicking and tracing separate parts for each color you want. Once you are finished tracing one layer copy it then paste it onto a new layer and change the color black. Repeat those steps until you have a 1st layer that each layer goes on, and each layer is done. Then save each file and put onto a hard drive. Put the hard drive into the computer that is hooked up to the vinyl cutting machine. Pick out the color roll you want for each color layer and put the roll onto the holder, put the start of the sheet in between the two rollers and press F1 FORCE and ENTER. ON the computer click FILE, Cutting Master 2 and Cut/Plot, then Send. Let it cut and repeat that step for each layer.
Once all layers are "printed" cut excess off with scissors, grab a dental tool and at a 45 degree angle peel off the excess and use the dental tool to make sure everything comes off smoothly and everything you want to keep stays on the white backing. Cut some tape off and place on top of the layers. Squidgy the air out to make sure there is a tight seal but make sure that you do not do this step to the background image. Once you have all images on the tape peel off the white backing, and place on the background image. Once all images are on the background make sure you squidgy each layer onto the background layer and then peel off the tape. Finally put one last layer of tape onto all of the images and squidgy the air out. Once you know what you want to put the vinyl on peel off the backing and place the vinyl on the on the object. Squidgy the air out of that and and peel off the tape making sure that it all stays on.
I learned that in vinyl one mistake can change the entire look of the vinyl. I believe that there are some things that could have gone better and I think that my project took longer that it should have, but I finished it in plenty of time and I think, to me, that it looks good. Each layer needs to be perfectly cut out to make sure that everything fits and on the spear I learned that it is very difficult to cut everything out. I took some shortcuts that ended up making it look really good and I am very happy with how everything turned out.