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In case you haven’t heard, Cricut has come out with a new set of tools that can take your crafting up a notch! The perforation blade, wavy blade, fine debossing tip, and engraving tip can turn any project into a keepsake worth sharing.

I recently had a chance to try my hand at the perforation blade and have been having a ton of fun doing so. The possibilities are endless. You could make raffle tickets, save the date cards, tear-out booklet pages, a special occasion card (like the one I’ll show you below), and so much more.

About the Cricut Perforation Blade

Evenly spaced perforation lines allow for clean, well-spaced tearing without the need to fold beforehand – especially great for shapes with curves.

Get the perfect tear quickly and effortlessly with precise perforation cuts for a wide variety of projects. To create uniform, finely perforated lines for any design, snap this tip onto the QuickSwap Housing and tell your Cricut Maker to “Go!”

Perforation is primarily for paper and cardstock, but you can use it on faux leather, craft foam, and acetate. Cricut Design Space allows you to select iron-on and vinyl as compatible materials; however, if I’m being honest, I have no idea why you’d want to use it for those materials!

What is the QuickSwap Housing?

To use the Cricut Perforation Tool, you will need the QuickSwap Housing. This is the housing for the tip—the part of the tool with the gear and plunger at the top that allows you to swap out different tools. My QuickSwap Housing was included with my scoring wheel, so if you have a scoring wheel then you already have the housing — yay!

If you don’t already have a tool that uses the housing, you can buy the Perforation Tool including the housing, or you can buy just the tip.

Creating a Cut File with Perforations

It couldn’t be any easier to create a perforation line right in the Cricut Design Space software. Simply create a scoring line using the shapes tool selection.

Once you have your line where you’d like it, you are going to choose the perf option in Linetype.

Next, select both the perforation line you’ve just created and the base layer you want it to cut on by using the attach button on the bottom of the Layers panel. This ensures the perforation will cut in the correct place.

Make a Christmas Card with a Hidden Gift Pocket

New to cardstock? Check out this cardstock tutorial to get started!

Open this Design Space project to create or edit this same card.

You’ll notice that this card has quite a few parts.

Cut and Assemble the Perforation Card

Cut all the layers following the prompts for the scoring wheel, perforation blade, fine tip blade, and the Cricut pen.

Assemble the card as described below. You’ll need to apply adhesive to each layer as you go. Glue runners work really well for this, however, I was out and used tacky glue that worked just as well.

The Layers

Note: Colors listed below refer to the colors used in Design Space. I may have cut using different colors of cardstock for my final project.

The large white piece is the main body of the card. It includes the score line for folding as well as the Christmas tree drawn with Cricut pens. The lines around the tree are the perforation lines so that the tree can be torn out and a hidden surprise revealed beneath.

The line down the center is the score line where you will fold the card.

The gray layer is the base for the front of the card. I actually cut mine out of gold and embossed it using my Cricut Cuttlebug to give the card a bit more dimension, but that step is totally optional. You will adhere this layer to the front of the large white base.

The white tag with writing gets adhered to the gray layer. The text is written with Cricut pens. The text has already been fixed for letter spacing so it won’t be directly editable, however, if you want to change any of the words you can type your own and attach them to the same place the text is currently located.

The small white rectangle goes on top of the gray layer as well and is the base for your trees. It is a different color so the trees can pop out a bit more. The trees are each a different color, but also have a base layer of brown beneath. The stars and garland are also different colors of cardstock.

The pink layer is the part of the card that will be exposed with the tree is pulled away. I used the new wavy blade on this layer to give it a little extra something. I do realize it is on the back of the card, but nothing wrong with making that a little extra fancy too!

When you adhere it to the white base, make sure the colored side is facing in toward the white (you won’t see it until the tree is torn away). You adhere this to the very back of the card.

Remember NOT to apply glue directly to the part of the Christmas tree that will be pulled away.

If you will be adding a special surprise behind your tree, be sure to put that in before you glue everything together. You won’t be able to add it in later once the back layer is glued on.

After everything was attached and the glue was dry, I wrote a message in my own handwriting. I can’t have the Maker do all my writing for me! Plus, I feel it gives it a more personal feel this way.

You can see that I also started to tear away a small portion of the tree and wrote “pull here” so as to make it painfully obvious what you are supposed to do. You don’t want someone tossing out the card when there is a nice gift still inside!

A Perforated Tear-Away Card — The Big Reveal

If you want to see the full tear-away as I did it live, check out the video below. I did a live stream on my Facebook page and you can catch the full replay via my YouTube channel.