About Gridback

Gridback is a free sticker sheet maker that runs in your browser. It is built for people who sell stickers on Etsy or at craft fairs and cut them on a Cricut or Silhouette, or send sheets to a print shop with a printer-cutter. It is named after the printed grid on the back of sticker liner.

How it works

Cut lines

Each design is read at up to 2,400 pixels on its long side. Pixels above the edge-sensitivity threshold count as artwork. An exact Euclidean distance transform measures how far every other pixel is from the artwork, and the cut line is the contour at your chosen border distance, traced with marching squares and interpolated between pixels so it is smooth rather than stepped. The outline is then simplified (Ramer–Douglas–Peucker) and optionally rounded (Chaikin corner cutting), and scaled so the finished sticker is exactly the size you typed. Holes are filled unless you ask to cut them. If a design has separate pieces, they are joined by straight bridges along the shortest connections, so every design stays one sticker. Rounded-rectangle and circle cuts are drawn geometrically instead.

Packing

Stickers are packed by their cut-line bounding boxes with a MaxRects bin packer, trying both a tidy top-left row order and a best-short-side-fit order and keeping the denser result, rotating stickers 90 degrees when that fits more. Registration-mark corners are blocked out rather than shrinking the whole sheet. It is box packing, not true shape nesting, so irregular stickers leave some space a human might fill.

Files

• Print PNG at 300 dpi, with the resolution written into the file.
• Cut SVG with its width and height in inches, so it opens at true size.
• Cut DXF (R12, inches) for software that does not open SVG.
• CutContour PDF: the sheet artwork as an image and every cut line as a 0.25 pt vector stroke in a Separation spot color named CutContour (100 % magenta alternate), set to overprint. The kiss-cut sheet outline uses a second spot color whose name you choose.

All of this runs on your device in a Web Worker. Your images are never uploaded.

Where the machine numbers come from

Each limit was checked on 17 October 2026. Software updates change them, so treat your machine's own software as the final word.

• Cricut Print Then Cut areas (7.44 × 9.94 in on Letter, 7.2 × 10.62 in on A4, 10.64 × 15.44 in on A3): Cricut Help: How large can I Print Then Cut? (edited 2026-08-19). The 6.75 × 9.25 in safe area: Cricut blog: How to get the best results with Print Then Cut (2021).
• Silhouette registration mark thickness default (0.5 mm) and 4-point marks: Silhouette Studio release notes and Silhouette America: CAMEO 5 Alpha (4-point registration marks). The default mark length (20 mm) and inset (0.625 in) come from user guides, not Silhouette, and are editable for that reason.
• CutContour naming: Roland DGA: Roland VersaWorks manual, Performing cutting (checked 2026-10-25), Roland DGA: The perfect setup, file preparation for print/cut production and Mimaki RasterLink7 reference guide: cut spot color names.

Limits

• Gridback does not drive your cutter. You still send the job from Design Space, Silhouette Studio or the print shop's RIP.
• Cricut does not publish its sensor-mark geometry or bleed width, and Silhouette does not publish all mark defaults. Do a test cut on plain paper first.
• Colors on screen are RGB; your printer converts them. Print a proof before a large run.
• The Etsy fee calculator in the pricing guide is an estimate, not tax or financial advice.

Contact

Found a wrong limit or a file your cutter will not read? Join the list at the bottom of any page and reply to the first email; it reaches the person who builds Gridback.