How To Make Cricut Mat Sticky Again

I have been using my Cricut a lot lately with all these new blocks ideas and orders I have been making, and I was beginning to lose a lot of the stickiness off my mat.  I am frugal and like to get the most out of things and so I had just continued using the non-sticky mat and when it would mess up my letters, which was happening very frequently, I would recut that letter and move on. 

I finally got to the point where I was having to reprint too many letters and even some letters more than once and so I decided that was it...I was going to get a new Cricut mat!  Then, other things happened and life just got in the way and I never made it to the hobby store to get a new mat and I needed to cut some more letters when I remembered that I had come across a blog post about making your old Cricut mat sticky again.

I went back and found the post to see how this was done.  I wrote down the name of the glue that it recommended I use and when I was at Wal-Mart the next time getting groceries I looked for this glue that I needed.  I found something a little different, but again didn't want to go to a specialty store and so I decided to try what I had found.  

By the way, that is why I love Wal-Mart so much...you can get everything you need there, not just groceries...all in one trip.  A lot of people don't like Wal-Mart, but I don't see how you can dislike a place where you can get everything that you want in one trip!  And at good prices too! 

To my relief and disbelief, it worked and now I am telling you how to be frugal and reuse your old Cricut mat over and over again until you wear it completely out with cuts!

Here is my old mat.  It is hard to tell in the picture, but it had hardly any sticky parts left, old paper still stuck to it and is starting to get pretty cut up.

And here is the glue that I found.  Elmer's 2 Way glue stick pen thingie.  I squeezed glue all over the board and then spread it out as even as I could until the entire mat was covered in glue. 

You will want a thin layer of glue on the entire mat so try to cover the entire thing evenly without any clumps of glue.

I actually have some clumpy areas on my mat, which is how I know to tell you not to do this.  Just do the best you can or those spots will be super sticky and will make it hard to remove the paper after you have used it.

Lay the mat down somewhere to dry.  Once you are sure that it is completely dry you are ready to try it.  You can see how readily it sticks to the palm of my hand when I put it on the dried mat. 

When you start to use your mat again, be careful not to press the paper on too hard.  If you do press too hard, then your paper will stick to the mat so good that you wont be able to get it off!  Especially in areas that have clumps, which is why I warned you about them before.  Just barely lay the paper down on the mat and do your cutting.  Once you see how well it sticks, you will be able to better judge your pressure on the paper next time.

This was a time and money saver for me not having to get a new mat and I hope you find it helpful as well!  If you are making something that needs to be more perfect than perfect you might want to go ahead and get a new mat, but for my fun little crafts, this will work just fine for me for another several cuttings.