How to Make Keyboard Letter Decals with Cricut Joy

Are you tired of squinting at your keyboard, trying to decipher worn-off letters? Say goodbye to the frustration with an ingenious solution: keyboard letter decals crafted with the precision of a Cricut machine. Gone are the days of struggling to locate the right keys. Now, with leftover scraps of vinyl, you can effortlessly revive your keyboard's appearance and functionality with a small time investment.

Materials:

Cricut Joy or any Cricut machine
Permanent vinyl scraps - I used black and white
Green Standard Grip Joy cutting mat
     OR
Joy SmartVinyl Permanent in Black and White
     (This Tuxedo Bundle would work great for this project.)
Cricut Joy Starter Tool Set
Transfer Tape
Cricut Scissors

My keyboard had several frequently used letters that were almost completely worn off, especially C, N and M. This was a problem for my husband when he used my computer, as he is not a typist. He suggested making new letter decals, and I thought it was a great idea.

I had plenty of vinyl scraps to use, and my Cricut Joy would work great for such a small project. I would make decals for all of the letters, so they would look the same.

My keyboard is black with white letters, and I wanted to stay with those colors, so the letters would stand out. I also made the letters bigger since the originals were small and harder to see.

I started in Design Space, typing the letters in "Qwerty" order according to my keyboard. I tried several fonts and chose the DIN Neuzeit Grotesk Pro Light font, as it most closely matched my current keyboard letters. I sized the letters to 1/4 inch high. Only the letter keys needed updating, so I replaced those and left the other keyboard characters alone.

Once I had all the letters typed, I grouped and attached them and hit Make It to cut them out. I loaded my green cutting mat into my Joy and hit Go.

Because the letters were still fairly small, I decided to weed them in reverse. I cut a piece of transfer tape about the same size as the vinyl with the decals and burnished it onto the entire piece of white vinyl.

I pulled off the vinyl backing and then the white vinyl, leaving the letters on the transfer tape. I still had to be careful not to pull off letters while doing this.

Once the weeding was done, I was ready for the next step.

I was going to cut a black rectangle for the background with the Joy but realized it would just be a simple shape and did not need to be perfect, so instead I cut it out with a scissors. 

I laid the white letters over the black vinyl, sticky side up, to see how it would look. Using my Cricut scraper, I burnished the transfer tape with the white letters right side up onto the black vinyl. I peeled off the transfer tape, and everything looked great. 

Now I just needed to separate the letters and apply them to my keyboard. I used my Cricut scissors to cut the letters into strips, laying one over my keyboard to see what size I needed to make the individual squares.

Then I cut the strips into small squares to fit onto the keys.

I again used my Cricut scraper to burnish each individual letter onto its corresponding key. At first, I did this without using transfer tape, but I found it very difficult to remove the backing from the black vinyl.

Continuing on, I used a small square of transfer tape to move the letters onto the keyboard. It seemed silly, but it was easier to remove the vinyl backing this way.

By this point, I started thinking maybe this was too much work. I had not even considered that there may be premade keyboard letter stickers I could have purchased instead. Oh, well, it was too late for that.

The keyboard letter decals turned out pretty well, and they were so much easier to see than the previous letters, so this was definitely worth doing. Surprisingly, I found that I really liked having the larger letters on my keyboard. Apparently, there are times I do need to look down to pick out a singe letter, and this is extremely helpful.

Would you do a project like this? You could use any color of vinyl and even a funky font to make it more interesting. How fun to have a keyboard with your own unique style. Who knows, if you work in an office setting, you might get requests from your coworkers to make them their own custom made keyboard decals.

Why buy it for $7 when you can make it yourself with $92 of craft supplies? 

Leslie 

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