Starting a Vinyl Business: Tools you'll need

In Part 1 I talked about how I got started. Next: What you will need!



Scissors/ Paper Cutter: When I am cutting item the first thing I do is cut the design off the roll of vinyl. It there are grids on the back of your vinyl, then cut on the grids and you will have straight lines. If you don't have grids then you need to use a T (we got ours at Ace) to draw a straight line and cut on. For a roll/ piece of vinyl under 15" I use our paper cutter.



Exacto: Weeding  takes some time to learn. The very first item I bought besides my cutter and vinyl was an Exacto knife! I see a lot of people who use dental tools. I have tried them and for me it made weeding even harder! You can try them, but don't waste your money and go right to an Exacto knife!

Transfer tape: When I cut vinyl for the first time for my friend I asked her where her transfer tape was, she didn't get any. She and her husband ended up peeling up each letter off the backing and putting them on one by one! Once I was at a craft night where they were putting vinyl sayings on tiles, but didn't have it in their budget to get transfer tape. As everyone was putting them on letter by letter I went and bragged some scotch tape and used that! You won't want to use something much stickier than that, like masking tape or duck tape!


Squeegee: You can't really press the transfer tape onto the vinyl without a squeegee! If you apply vinyl to something for yourself or install for a customer you need a squeegee for that too.


Other items I use:
Rubberbands- I put them around my vinyl rolls to keep them wrapped up.


Storage bin- to hold all my scraps.


Extra blades for my Exacto and Cutter

Calculator to figure out pricing