Using VLR To Remove HTV - Fixing A Cricut Fail

Cliff Notes:

• Buy VLR - Amazon is the only place I know of to find it.
• Apply to the back of the fabric.  Stretch the fabric.  Peel off the htv.
• Super easy.  Worked great!

I love this pillow (second from the left), despite my mistakes in not welding the pumpkins to the truck...    But my husband and I did not get married in 1993.  That's when our twins were born.  We got married in 1991.  Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking either.  :-)

VLR is something I had heard mentioned a few times on different facebook groups, so when I placed my last amazon order, I added a can to my order.  It has sat on the shelf ever since.  I was intimidated by it.

Today, Design Space was down.  (Still is, actually...)  so it was a good time to try the VLR.  My first challenge was opening it.  Although I knew it couldn't actually be aerosol, when I saw I had to puncture the top (which the label says is plastic, but sounds more like metal when tapped) it made me nervous to use a hammer and nail.  I couldn't think of another way to do this, so a hammer and nail it was.

That worked fine!  

The next instruction was to remove the red tip from the spout  - my spout did not have a red tip.  The cap appeard to be missing.  (So once I was done, I taped the top close, because this smells like something that might evaporate, and it is not exactly cheap.)

(For these pillows I had used the "backside" of some clearance fabric..  so the inside of the pillow case has a design, as shown here. The wet spot is where I applied the VLR)

The next instructions are to turn the item inside out and apply the liquid to the back of the design. That sounds easy enough, but it is actually a little tricky, if you cannot see the design through the fabric, and do not want to remove all of the vinyl.  Still, I managed well enough.  I ended up losing both the 3 and the 9 - but I don't mind replacing two small numbers, I was replacing one anway!

Once you apply the liquid, you stretch the fabric, and then when turned right side out, the vinyl comes off REALLY easily!  Or at least it did for this one!

In addition to my date mistake, I had this pillow, that my sister in law had asked me to make.  She brought the cover.  I applied the htv.  Then two weeks later, my nephew changed his mind and enlisted in the Navy, instead of the Air Force.  She had suggested I just add all of the branches to the pillow and make the Navy the largest.. but I thought I would like it better if I could remove the htv and start fresh.

For the this second one, the material didn't have as much stretch, so the vinyl didn't pull up quite as much on it's own.  It still was REALLY easy to pull up a corner and peel the vinyl right off!

Since design space is down as I type this, I have not tried re-applying new vinyl, and I am curious how well it will adhere - but I'll update this once I know!

(a quick video of the htv peeling off, to show you how easily it comes up!)