You've designed something beautiful in Design Space, hit cut, and watched your Cricut slice straight through the middle of your image, because you skipped the Print Then Cut step.
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Print Then Cut is one of the most useful features in Cricut Design Space, but it trips people up constantly. Once you understand how it actually works, and why the registration marks matter so much, the whole thing clicks into place fast.
This guide walks you through exactly how to use Cricut Print Then Cut, from setup to finished cut, including what to do when the registration marks fail.
What Print Then Cut Is (And When You'd Use It)
Print Then Cut is a two-step process. You print your design on a home printer first, then feed that printed sheet into your Cricut, which cuts around it. The machine uses small black registration marks printed in the corners to find the design and cut precisely.
The key word there is around. Cricut isn't printing anything, your printer does that part. Cricut just cuts. That's what makes it different from regular cutting, where you're working with solid vinyl or cardstock without any printed image.
The best use cases are things like stickers, illustrated labels, patterned shapes, and custom iron-on transfers with detailed graphics. Basically any project where the design itself is colorful or printed, not just a cut shape.
It doesn't work for every project. If you just want to cut a shape from colored cardstock, you don't need Print Then Cut at all. But for sticker sheets, product labels, or printed fabric shapes? It's genuinely the right tool.
What You Need for Print Then Cut
Before you start, gather a few things so you're not scrambling halfway through.
- A home inkjet or laser printer, any standard printer works, though inkjet gives the most vibrant color
- White printable material, sticker paper, printable vinyl, cardstock, or printable iron-on
- A Cricut cutting mat. LightGrip works for most paper-based materials
- Cricut Design Space on a desktop or laptop (Print Then Cut isn't fully supported on mobile)
- Your Cricut machine. Explore Air 2, Explore 3, Maker, Maker 3, and Joy Xtra all support it
One thing worth knowing: the Print Then Cut area is limited to 9.25 inches wide by 6.75 inches tall. Your design has to fit inside that boundary, or Design Space will flag it before you even get to printing.
If you're brand new to Design Space and still finding your footing, the Cricut Design Space Tutorial for Beginners is a solid starting point before diving into Print Then Cut.
Setting Up a Print Then Cut Design in Design Space
Open Design Space and create a new project. Upload your image, a PNG with a transparent background works best for stickers and labels. Once it's on the canvas, click the image to select it.
Look at the top toolbar. You'll see an "Operation" dropdown, it probably says "Basic Cut" by default. Click that and select Print Then Cut. The image thumbnail will shift slightly to show it's been flagged for printing rather than direct cutting.
Resize your design to fit within the Print Then Cut boundary. Design Space will warn you if it's too large, but it's easier to check the size manually in the top toolbar before you get to the Make It screen.
If you're building a sticker sheet with multiple images, arrange them all on the canvas and leave a little space between each one. You don't need a huge gap, about 0.1 inches is fine. Group similar images together if you want them on one sheet.
When everything looks right, click Make It. Design Space will show you a preview of your mat layout. This is where you'll see the registration marks appear around your design, those small L-shaped black marks in the corners. Don't resize or reposition anything at this stage.
Printing Your Design Correctly
On the Make It screen, you'll click Send to Printer. Design Space will open a print dialog. Here's where most mistakes happen.
Make sure Add Bleed is turned on if you want the color to extend slightly past the cut line, this prevents a white border around stickers. It's on by default, and honestly I'd leave it on for almost every project.
Do not scale the print to fit your paper. If your printer's dialog asks about fitting or scaling, set it to 100% or "Actual Size." Any scaling will shift the registration marks, and your Cricut will miss the cut line entirely.
Load your printable material into the printer, sticker paper, printable vinyl, whatever you're using, and print. Let the ink dry completely before touching it. With inkjet printers, give it at least 60 seconds. Rushing this step can smear ink and ruin the registration marks.
Check the printed sheet. The registration marks should be clean, solid black, and in all four corners. If they're faded, your ink is low. If they're smeared, you loaded the paper wrong. Both will cause problems at the cutting stage.
Loading the Printed Sheet and Running the Cut
Place your printed sheet on the cutting mat, printed side up. Line it up with the top-left corner of the mat grid, not the very edge of the mat, but the 0,0 grid position. Press it down firmly so it doesn't shift during calibration.
Load the mat into your Cricut and press the blinking button to begin. The machine will move the mat forward and backward a couple of times first. That's normal. It's scanning the registration marks with a small sensor near the blade carriage.
Once it finds the marks, it'll pause briefly and then start cutting. Watch the first few cuts to make sure the blade is tracking correctly. If the cuts look offset, like they're shifted up, down, left, or right, stop the cut and don't try to salvage it. You'll need to fix the calibration first (more on that below).
When the cut finishes, unload the mat and gently peel the material back from the mat rather than peeling the mat away from the material. For sticker paper, a weeding tool helps lift clean edges without stretching.
When Print Then Cut Registration Fails (And How to Fix It)
Registration failure is the most frustrating part of Print Then Cut. The cut lands in the wrong spot, or the machine keeps throwing a "registration mark not found" error. Here's what's usually going wrong.
Lighting issues. The Cricut sensor needs good, consistent light to read the marks. If you're in a very bright room with direct sunlight hitting the mat, it can throw off the sensor. Close the blinds or move the machine. Sounds odd, but it works.
Faded registration marks. If your printer ink is low, the marks won't be dark enough to read. Print a test page first if you're unsure about ink levels.
Scaling during print. This is the most common cause of offset cuts. The registration marks get printed at a slightly different size than expected, so the machine can't align them correctly. Always print at 100%.
Calibration is off. Design Space has a Print Then Cut calibration tool built in. Go to Settings → Calibration → Print Then Cut and follow the on-screen steps. You print a calibration sheet, measure the marks, and enter the values. Do this once whenever you notice consistent offset cuts.
If you're still having trouble after calibrating, try switching from a glossy sticker paper to a matte finish. The sensor sometimes reads matte surfaces more reliably, and matte sticker paper tends to cut cleaner anyway.
Print Then Cut has a bit of a learning curve, but once you've run it successfully two or three times, the process becomes second nature. It's genuinely one of the features that separates Cricut from basic cutting tools, and the results, especially on multi-color sticker sheets, are hard to beat with any other method.