LinkedGo Blank Stencil Sheet 4-6-10mil

Mylar Stencil Guide – Which Mylar Sheets Should I Use?


Sign making has became popular over the past few years. Mainly due to the popularity of hobby vinyl cutting machines, such as the Cricut models, and the Silhouette models. – LinkedGo Mylar Stencil will be happy

I feel overwhelmed with all of the differences between LinkedGo Mylar Stencil Sheets, what thickness you should use with each one of them.

Many of these crafters that are creating signs end up using Mylar stencil and adhesive or heat transfer vinyl. A lot of these crafters are beginner sign makers and are intimidated by paint and wood working. While this isn’t the “wrong” way to create a sign, in my opinion, it isn’t the way to achieve the highest quality signs. However, there is no right or wrong way. It all comes down to user preference.

Blank mylar can be used for cutting your own stencils and for may different uses. This material has great properties:

  • This extremely tough and hard to rip material.
  • It is flexible so that it can be rolled and will conform to curved surfaces.
  • Dimensionally stable so that it does not stretch and will keep its shape.
  • It is translucent so that you can see contrast through it allowing perfect placement for stencils.
  • Paint does not like to stick to it so it is easy to clean.

What do you need LinkedGo Mylar Stencil Sheets?

Before I got the Mylar Stencil sheets, I have never understood why there are different thickness of sheets, if you don’t know what stencil sheets does like me, this is a interesting thing for you to know.

LinkedGo proud to offer the highest quality stencil material available, authentic Mylar sheets. 4 mil, 6 mil, 10 mil Mylar sheets in 12″ x 12″ size sheets. We know how tough it can be to find the right material that will be the same consistent quality you expect. You’re guaranteed to receive authentic Mylar at the desired thickness every time you order with no exceptions. Our material is incredibly durable yet flexible enough for a variety of applications.

4 Mil Mylar Stencil Sheets

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4 mil Mylar : All of the mylars make great stencils. We recommend 4 mil for DIY stencils as they cut easily and still make an effective stencil for most uses. 4 mil cuts easily with a scalpel knife. We also recommend 4 mil for electric cutters like Cricuts and Silhouettes.

From interior decorating to logos and crests, to face painting, to small industrial projects, it’s as easy as drawing your design on, cutting, and painting on any surface you like!

This mylar is a glossy material specifically engineered for easy cutting with a pen or exacto knife. With a material this thin, any design you come up with will produce crisp lines that pop right out off of your surface. We recommend brushing or rolling your paint on with this material for optimum line definition.

Great for arts and crafts, custom lettering, signs, designs, and more. Make sure your stencil is cut with adequate bracing, and leave room on the edges for excess paint. Easy to clean? You bet. Just add a little soap and water or paint remover to the stencil material and watch as the paint comes right off.

6 Mil Mylar Stencil Sheets

It has both flexibility and durability. It will conform to rounded surfaces easily. light and easily attached to vertical surfaces with our repositionable adhesive spray, cut with a firm manual knife or gyro cutter. Our experience is that consumer grade electric cutters like a Cricut do not cut this material consistently We recommend 6 mil for repeat 2 cuts. Ideal for various diy projects: drawing & drafting, art journals, kids craft, home decor, painting wall, wood, fabric signs.

Change pressure to 330 and number of passes to 2. Fine cut blade and standard grip mat. Works like a charm! Once you edit the settings they will remain as your default settings anytime you choose

10 Mil Mylar Stencil Sheets

10 mil mylar makes a great stencil. the material is very durable but still is flexible enough to conform to curved surfaces and light enough to use easily on vertical surfaces. It also allows a very high degree of detail.

However it is more difficult to cut. Most consumer grade electric cutters cannot cut this material, ( the new Cricut Maker is the exception.) If cutting by hand, we recommend a heated stencil cutting tool.

This material is light enough for applying to vertical and horizontal surfaces. (Use our Repositionable Spray to attach to a wall while stenciling.) Great for arts and crafts, custom lettering, signs, designs, and more. Make sure your stencil is cut with adequate bracing, and leave room on the edges for excess paint.


FAQ – Common Questions

WHAT IS MYLAR MADE OF AND WHAT ARE ITS PROPERTIES?
Mylar is a polyester film (or PET) that is used for a variety of industrial applications. It can handle temperatures of -10F to 300F and has a resistance to most chemicals. We can provide a full spec sheet upon request.

CAN THESE STENCIL BLANKS BE USED IN A LASER CUTTER?
Of course! This is the exact material we use for our stencils here at Stencil Revolution. We’ve tried a variety of materials and found that Mylar is by far the best performing and best looking stencil material available. There is little to no discoloration from cuts and the material reacts great with the laser resulting in minimal melt. This helps us create precision cut stencils that our customers love.

WHAT ABOUT HAND CUTTING AND DIY PROJECTS?
With a sharp Xacto knife you can cut this material no problem. You can also draw on it before hand with a marker to trace your design.

IS IT WASHABLE?
Yes with soap and water it can be wash very easily. That is the beauty of this material, since it is resistant to most chemicals it can handle a variety of paints and cleaners.

HOW DURABLE IS MYLAR? HOW FLEXIBLE IS IT?
Without a knife or pair of scissors you aren’t cutting these blank mylar sheets. With a sharp blade it can be cut fairly easy but you will need to replace blades quite often to get a smooth cut. It’s also very flexible for bending around different surfaces such as a glass or bottles for etching.

WHAT ABOUT ADHESIVE BACKED, ACETATE, MAGNETIC STENCIL MATERIAL?
We’re not big fans of adhesive backed since it’s only a one time use. This really defeats the purpose of a good stencil. A great alternative is to just use an adhesive spray which can be removed after use. For customers who need to apply the stencil to metal quickly, there are adhesive back magnets which can be attached at each corner of the stencil. Then acetate is just a low quality material we refuse to work with.

Mandala Coloring Calendar 2021

Free Printable Mandala Coloring Calendar 2021


Hello, friends! Are you searching for a 2021 calendar to use as early as now? I totally get it. Just like you, I always print my calendars for the upcoming year way early because I love the whole excitement of having my goals written down ahead of time. It makes me feel confident and more aligned with my dreams. Do you feel the same way?

This free printable 2021 calendar will become your most favorite organizing tool! Plan your schedule, organize events, manage your goals, keep track of activities, and more!

There just seems to be something about calendars that gets people excited. Maybe it’s all of the possibilities that a fresh new calendar represents. Maybe we’re drawn to the order and organization aspect of it all. Or maybe we just like free stuff! 😉

Mandala Coloring Calendar 2021

GET YOUR FREE PRINTABLE MANDALA COLORING CALENDAR 2021

Mandala Coloring Book for Christmas Calendar for Year 2021 Enjoy this Amazing Coloring Book Xmas Calendar with your family! Print it out for friends, family, your kids and color it!

The calendar comes with the size 8.5 x 11 inches or Letter size format. Christmas ornament mandala in monogram easy to coloring for kids and adults. Sunday starts calendar .

Product includes:

  • 12 calendar pages for each month in PDF & JPEG
  • PDF in 1 comprehensive file for all 12 pages
  • 12 individual pages in JPEG 300dpi (high resolution)

How to Use These Calendar Pages

Personally, I like having a couple of different calendars on the go!

Since we manage several home-based businesses, I find it easier to have three designated calendars for each business rather than a very cluttered individual one.

Other ways to use calendar pages include:

  • Family calendar
  • Child care
  • Teacher or student calendar
  • Blogging schedule
  • Social media content planner
  • Work calendar
  • Monthly goals
  • Home improvement
  • Budgeting
  • Fitness

If you have a project on the go, consider printing one of these free printable calendar pages for the month – or the entire year – to plan out how you’ll get it done!

Export SVGs in Adobe Illustrator

How To Export SVG For The Web From Adobe Illustrator

Something I used to struggle with was exporting SVG from Adobe Illustrator. Our designers make these great comps for us to code up. But what’s the best way to take their vector files and convert them into an optimized SVG on the web?

This is exactly what you will learn today.

Creating SVG in Adobe Illustrator

When you create a graphic in Illustrator—which is intended for SVG export—you need to perform some steps and considerations required to make the final output properly optimized for web. Let’s explore them now.

Set the Correct Color Space

Illustrator — as most vector illustration software — was originally designed for print production, and therefore its color space is set to CMYK by default. RGB is much more appropriate for web and screen use, and has a wider gamut (range of colors) than CMYK. So, when you create new document, make sure the color mode is set to RGB – as you can see in the image below.

Give your drawing a proper structure

An SVG file is not like a regular bitmap image — a grid of pixels. It’s a text document that has a specific structure.

Like an HTML document, you can select and manipulate individual elements separately. To do this, you’ll need to use their names as a reference. I’ve found it’s always much easier to create these labels during visual editing in Illustrator, rather than later.

For that reason, it’s important to give a meaningful name to each graphic element as you make it. Here is what you need to know when you create a graphic in Illustrator:

  • Layers and Layers Groups names are used as IDs for SVG groups
  • Symbols names are used as IDs for SVG symbols
  • Graphic Styles names are used as CSS classes

In the images below, you can see in action how names from an Adobe Illustrator file reflect to the exported SVG

Simplify your shapes whenever possible

The shapes in an SVG drawing are described with coordinate points. The more points a drawing has, the larger the file size and more difficult it is to edit and maintain. Creating small, efficient files makes your life easier later.

To solve this issues, you need to use the fewest possible number of points to create the shapes you need. This can be achieved in several ways.

Use Primary SVG shapes instead of SVG paths whenever possible

Using simple elements like line, rect, and circle has some significant advantages.

Firstly, simple shapes are much more readable for humans – it’s self-evident that a circle is a circle when we see it in our SVG code, but the code for a path can be anything until we see it render.

Secondly, simple shapes almost always produce smaller file sizes and less code, which make them easier for maintain and edit. You can also control them more easily with their direct attributes such as x, y, cx, cy, instead of point coordinates as it is with paths.

To see what I mean, in the image below you can see a simple circular shape defined once as a SVG circle element and once as a SVG path. Though they render identically, it’s clear that the SVG shape is smaller and more versatile. Be aware that some graphics editors – Fireworks’s SVG export extension was an example – automatically convert SVG shapes to paths when you export. Obviously, try hard to avoid this.

Simplify your paths

A path is nothing more than an array of coordinate points. To simplify a path means to cut out some of its points, which will lead to less path data and smaller file size. To do so you can use Object > Path > Simplify… command or Warp Tool. In both cases, the main point is to reduce the path’s points maximally without loosing the quality of visual appearance.

In the images below, you can see how Illustrator’s simplify process reduces path points from 32 to 23 — which is about 25% — and how this reflects to the code. The path data is decreased while the visual quality still remains at a good level.

Decide whether to convert text to paths

In SVG graphics, text is a standalone element and as such it is searchable, accessible, and easily re-editable. This is a valuable quality for text to have. However, if you want to guarantee your text looks exactly the way you designed it everywhere, your end-user will need to have access to the correct fonts. This means choosing a common fonts — which limits your creativity — or providing a web font.

If precise text rendering is more important than editability — for example, in a logo — you can convert it into paths by using Type > Create Outlines command or by setting this option in the export panel as you’ll see later on.

Bear in mind that convert a lot of text to paths, the file size can increase drastically – so think carefully before converting.

Use ‘SVG filters’ in preference to Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop Filter Effects

Illustrator offers a set of SVG Filters that are applied live in the browser (Effect > SVG Filters). While Illustrator or Photoshop Effects are always permanently ‘baked into’ your raster images embedded inside the SVG, SVG filters can be changed or removed at any time with a few keystrokes.

You can also create re-usable filters and/or edit them via Apply SVG Filter dialog.

Fit artboard to drawing

If you want your SVG to be displayed predictably, it’s good habit to always to trim your artboard to the drawing before. The artboard dimensions are the dimensions of the exported SVG viewport, and any white space in the artboard will be generated as white space inside the viewport.

Depending on situation you can use Object > Artboards > Fit to Artwork Bounds or Object > Artboards > Fit to Selected Art command.

  • Left star will be exported with the surrounding white space
  • Right star will be exported with its proper dimensions.

Exporting SVG in Adobe Illustrator

When your graphic is ready for production, select File > Export > Export As… command, then select SVG as option for the file type and hit Export button. You should see the following panel:

Let’s explore the options presented in more detail.

Styling

There are three way to style your SVG and they are presented in the first dropdown list.

  1. The first is to use internal CSS (i.e. a block), which is generally considered the best option following the Separation of Concerns principle.</p>
  2. The second method is to use inline CSS styles (i.e. ).
  3. And the third method is to use SVG presentation attributes .

In the image below, you can see the difference between these three options.

Font

If you want to convert your text to outlines, here you can instruct Illustrator to do so. If you want to preserve your text editability, then select SVG option. Outlined text gives you complete visual control of your typography, but at a significant cost – file sizes blow out and text loses editability and searchability.

Note: SVG fonts will be removed from SVG 2 and is considered as a deprecated feature with support being removed from browsers.

Images

If you are using a raster graphic (like a JPG) in your SVG, you have two options. Choosing link means the raster graphic will live in its own file somewhere else. Choosing embed will make it part of the SVG. There’s no real performance difference either way since the file still has to be loaded. But linking keeps your SVG and non SVG components separate and easier to read. This one is personal preference. I like to embed it unless it’s a raster graphic I’m reusing elsewhere.

As a general rule, you’ll avoid many future headaches if you can simply avoid using pixel-based graphics in your SVGs whenever you can.

Object IDs

Generally the best option is to select Layer Names, because this will give you meaningful names for your individual SVG elements. Minimal uses random letter-numbers, and Unique uses large random combination of characters.

Decimal

As you can see from the graphic below, the path with 5 decimal places if far larger than the same path with 1 decimal – yet visually identical.

Keep in mind that If you make the number smaller, you’re removing precision of your vectors. If you make the number bigger, you’re adding precision but also adding to the file size.

Minify

Check this option only if you’re exporting a final version of your graphic for production and you are sure that the file won’t be edited anymore.

Responsive

It might make logical sense to turn this on. But we actually want to leave it off. If we check this box, our SVG won’t have any width or height on it. Until we add a width and height with CSS, our SVGs won’t know what to do. In a lot of cases, they will fill as much space as possible. By turning off responsive, we are adding a width and height to the base SVG. Luckily, if we also define a width and height in our CSS, it will override what is defined in the SVG itself.

However, you may want to further optimize your file with some specialized tool, such as SVGO or its web GUI-fied version SVGOMG.

Be aware that you do need to be careful when using these tools. They can easily break your document functionality. My advice is to use manual optimization whenever it’s possible and use automated optimization tool only if it’s necessary and with caution.

Conclusion

Now that you have your SVGs optimized and ready for use on the web, you’re all set to use them. Unlike other image files, there’s a couple different ways to get your vectors onto your page. I gave a talk at Connect.

Keen to learn the ins and outs of developing your own plugins, either to improve your workflow or the workflow of others? Check out WHAT IS SVG?

What is SVG?

Design Tips: What is SVG?

SVG stands for Scalable Vector Graphics. As the name implies, it’s a vector graphic format, which scales well. And that’s exactly what you want from a logo if your business requires a large format printing (like a T-shirt, a signboard or a sandwich board).

It turns out that SVG was the one graphic format that most closely responds to current web development demands of scalability, responsiveness, interactivity, programmability, performance, and accessibility.

What Is SVG and Why Should You Use It?

SVG is a vector graphic format—based on XML and is used to display a variety of graphics on the Web and other environments.

Under the hood, SVG documents are nothing more than simple plain text files that describe lines, curves, shapes, colors, and text.

As it is human-readable, easily understood and modified, SVG code can be manipulated via CSS or JavaScript. after that This give SVG a flexiblity and versatility that can’t ever be matched by traditional PNG, GIF or JPGs.

SVG is an W3C standard, which means it can inter-operate easily with other open standard languages and technologies including JavaScript, DOM, CSS, and HTML. As long as the W3C sets the global industry standards, it seems likely SVG will continue to be the de-facto standard for vector graphics in the browser.

The true value of SVG is it solves many of the most vexing problems in modern web development. Let’s see what they are.

  • Scalability and Responsiveness

Under the hood, SVG uses shapes, numbers and coordinates — rather than a pixel grid — to render graphics in the browser, which makes it resolution-independent and infinitely scalable. If you think about it, the instructions for creating a circle are the same whether you’re using a pen or a skywriting plane – only the scale changes.

In contrast, raster-based formats like GIF, JPG, and PNG have fixed dimensions, which causes them to pixelate when they are scaled. Although various responsive image techniques have proved valuable for pixel graphics, they will never be able to truly compete with SVG’s ability to scale infinitely.

  • Programmability and Interactivity

SVG is fully editable and scriptable. All kinds of animations and interactions can be added to a drawing via CSS and/or JavaScript.

  • Accessibility

SVG files are text-based and do can be searched and indexed. This make them readable by screen readers, search engines and other devices. By contrast, a chart

  • Performance

One of the most important aspects impacting web performance is the size of the used files on a web page. SVG graphics are routinely smaller file sizes compared to their raster graphics brethren.

Common Use Cases and Browser Support

SVG has an avalanche of practical use cases. Let’s explore the most significant of them.

  • Plain Illustrations and Diagrams

Any traditional drawing that may have been produced with pens and pencils should translate perfectly into the SVG format.

  • Logos and Icons

Logos and icons often share the same need to be clear and sharp at any size – from button to billboard. SVG icons are more accessible and are much easier to position.

  • Animations

You can create appealing animations, and even special kinds of animation, including SVG line drawings.

  • Interactivity (Charts, Graphs, Infographics, Maps)

SVG can be used to plot data and update it dynamically based on user actions or some events

  • Special Effects

Many live effects can be achieved by using SVG, including shape morphing or different gooey effects

  • Building Interfaces and Applications

SVG enables you can make challenging interfaces and incorporate it with HTML5, web-based applications, and rich Internet applications (RIAs).

As you can see, SVG is used almost everywhere and in countless situations. The good news about all this is that browser support for SVG is getting better.

At this moment, most modern web browsers support the most important and fundamentals features of the SVG. So, now you know the ‘why’ of SVG – let’s look at the ‘how’. In my next article, we’ll walk-thru the best way to use Adobe Illustrator to prepare your SVG files for the web.

So with the right typeface coupled with the right font styles (see “Font vs typeface: the ultimate guide”), we can create designs that are quite simple and yet visually appealing at the same time. This emphasizes the most important aspects of the design while using fewer resources and also inducing the least amount of unwanted cognitive load.

Typography can be very powerful.

But what are the best free font websites?

Dribbble, Behance, Gumroad, and so on are home to a ton of hidden gems, but this involves sieving through a lot of digital resources, some of which are incomplete side ventures and “lite” versions.

That being said, make sure that you bookmark awesome resources if you do happen to come across any. Even Instagram might surprise you, and Twitter shouldn’t be overlooked either.

That aside, let’s take a look as the best free font websites.

1. Google Fonts

First of all, Google Fonts offers a fast and convenient CDN (content delivery network), making it super easy to embed webfonts into websites without having to actually host them.

Google fonts can be subsetted by script and weight, and we can also control how they’re loaded on the Web by setting the font-display CSS property from the embed code’s query string, which improves website loading times. (The CSS-Tricks article on “Google Fonts and font-display” explains how.)

Mind you, self-hosting fonts is better for privacy (because it’s cookieless) and speed (because it offers developers more control). Either way, Google Fonts has a humungous repertoire.

2. Creative Market

What’s interesting about Free Goods is that these are actually premium fonts that are temporarily free. While the section isn’t that huge, and isn’t guaranteed to include fonts specifically, each and every week it’s refreshed with six new design assets (plus three more if you sign up and another three if you spend X amount on assets).

I’ve been checking the Free Goods section on Creative Market every week for years, and I’ve built up a large repository of high-quality fonts that cost literally nothing. Font Bundles runs a similar deal.

3. Font Squirrel

Font Squirrel is like Unsplash but for fonts, considering how long it’s been around (a really long time!) maybe saying that Unsplash is like Font Squirrel but for stock images is more accurate! It’s one of the veteran free font websites alongside Dafont, 1001 Free Fonts, and Urban Fonts, although “squirrel” is better.

Although many of the veteran sites look a little outdated, Font Squirrel has kept its website somewhat modern compared to the rest. It also has a couple of very useful tools:

what is an svg file

4. FontSpace

FontSpace is one of the nicer-looking websites, although it only offers fonts that are free for personal use.

what is svg? FontSpace

5. Befonts

What sets Befonts apart is its focus on display fonts.

Although some of the fonts only offer lite/demo versions and often enough only come in TTF/OTF format (meaning they’re less suitable for the Web), Befonts is one of the very few websites that doesn’t take the “we have everything” approach (which can be overwhelming sometimes). Besides, you can always convert TTF and OTF fonts into webfonts.

what is svg? Befonts

6. Font Shop

Font Shop doesn’t focus completely on free typefaces like Font Squirrel and FontSpace, but it’s still a rather decent alternative if options one to four didn’t have what you were looking for.

I find it to be the least user-friendly of the options, but the fonts are relatively high-quality.

what is svg ? Font shop

Which font format do I need?

OpenType (OTF) and TrueType (TTF) font formats have been the standard for a really long time, and they’re still used heavily in graphic design today. Therefore, WOFF formats have better compression on the Web. In fact, the new Google Fonts embed code only offers the WOFF2 format now.

So, in short:

  • WOFF2 for web embeds
  • TTF/OTF for everything else

Which font style do I need?

Nowadays, it doesn’t really matter all that much because the norms have been thrown out the window a little bit. As an example, Serif fonts can have a modern feel now (think Medium).

Instead, we should focus more on clarity:

  • Legibility (how easy it is to tell characters apart)
  • Readability (how easy it is to read sentences as a whole)

Some of this comes down to the font itself, so one should be observant when deciding which fonts to use, but other times it comes down to how the font is styling (in terms of size, weight, and so on).

When in doubt, the WCAG 2.0/2.1 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) have everything you need to know about typography and its many attributes, such as line spacing, line width, line height, font sizing, and so on.

Conclusion

Fonts are super useful, and they’re often all that’s needed to achieve the right amount of visual, emotional appeal without laying on more and more visual clutter. Your design needs text anyway, so why not make it the most outstanding aspect of it?