How to Reverse Weed Vinyl: Small Letters and Tiny Cuts

If you ever tried to weed small vinyl letters or detailed cuts only for the design or text to lift while weeding, you probably aren't reverse weeding. 

When reverse weeding vinyl you weed from the sticky transfer tape rather than the vinyl backing. The transfer tape helps prevent the small letters and cuts from lifting while you're weeding. Follow this tutorial for how to reverse weed adhesive vinyl (this doesn't work for HTV). 

Cut the vinyl like your normally would with your Silhouette CAMEO. 

After the cutting is complete trim close to the design. 

Place a piece of transfer tape, larger than the vinyl piece, over the entire piece of cut vinyl.  Burnish it so it sticks really well. 

Flip the piece of vinyl over and peel off the vinyl backing/carrier sheet. 

The adhesive side of the vinyl should be exposed on one side and the gridded transfer tape on the other side. 

Lay the piece down onto a flat surface with the adhesive side up.  Now weed away the vinyl.  I usually start with the largest piece around the outside of the design. 

You can use your hook or tweezers to get all of the small piece of vinyl that need to be removed. 

This is how you reverse weed: you're weeding from the transfer tape rather than the vinyl backing which keeps all those really small pieces in place.

When you have finished weeding, you can place the vinyl decal on the surface where you want to apply it or you can put it back on the vinyl backing/carrier sheet. 

The end result is the same as if you were to weed adhesive vinyl the traditional way off the vinyl backing. 

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