Are you ready for summer? All of the great gatherings, celebrations and events . . . oh wait, no . . . probably not this year. Even if you are keeping distant, you still deserve a new shirt to wear this summer so why not make yourself one like this.
I used a simple gray tank top, purchased online and with a curbside pick up since that is the way we do things now. I found this image on LoveSVG which is one of my favorite sites to go to for free svg files. They have a whole section devoted to images and phrases for the Covid and Social Distancing world we live in.
I used my Siser EasyWeed vinyl and cut the three colors for this image. I love the new charcoal gray color as a substitute for black on projects. It has a much softer look to it.
I am in a Scrapbook Layout group on Facebook, and recently several people have been sharing Sunburst Background Layouts. Many of the people in the group were cutting the triangle pieces by hand or with a paper trimmer. I thought that these layouts were a fun idea and I wanted to try one also, but I wanted to figure out a way to have my Cricut cut the pieces. This post will show you how I did that.
First, I did a little searching on the internet and found the template shown below. You can find this template by clicking HERE. This is not my personal template, and that is why I am leaving the information of who made it and linking directly to their blog post. I want to give credit to them for making this.
In the blog post where I found this template, it says you can save this image and print it out, but I am going to show you how I saved it and then uploaded it to Design Space to make it into a cutting file that I could use.
For this process I am going to be working on my computer. The steps would be slightly different if you are working on an iPad. There are going to be a LOT of screen shots of the steps, but I want to be very detailed so that everyone can understand the process. I will point out important parts of the screen shots with blue arrows and circles. I will do a short video towards the end if you would rather see the steps that way.
First, I saved the template image to my computer. Next, in Design Space I clicked on the Upload button and then went to where I saved the template image so I could bring that into Design Space. The first screen you see will ask you if this is a simple image, moderately complex or complex image. Since our image is just black and white with no shading or fine details, we will pick simple, which is indicated by the blue arrow in the image below.
The next screen is where we clean up the image. We want the Cricut to cut where the black lines are for this template, so we need to remove all of the white areas and just leave the black lines. Since our image is two colors, I am going to use the advanced option, indicated by the blue arrows, and change my color tolerances to two. Next I used the cropping tool, which the purple arrow is pointing too in the image below. Make a window around the template with this tool to crop out the words that are above the image.
Next, click on the little magic wand in the upper left corner, which I have circled in blue in the image aboce. The magic wand allows you to remove entire sections of the image that are the same color, so you are going to want to click on the gray areas leaving just the black lines. You can see by this image aboce that when I click on the gray areas, they change to the checkerboard pattern. This checker board represents the open areas of the design. The black lines represent what will be cut with the Cricut.
Once I have removed all of the gray areas, I can use the preview button at the bottom of the screen to see exactly what is going to cut out. This is a great way to verify that you have not missed any spots. If things look good, continue on to the next screen by clicking on the green button in the lower right corner.
*** IMPORTANT ***
I feel like this next screen is where a lot of people go wrong in the entire process of uploading images, so that is why I really wanted to call out how important this step is.
When you get to this screen, you will see two choices. The first one shows a preview and underneath it you can see that it says Save as a Print the Cut Image. If you choose this, then the image will be one that you have to send to your printer and then have the Cricut cut it out. This is NOT what you want for this type of project.
Look at the second preview. Underneath that it says Save as a Cut Image. No printing. Just put something on the Cricut mat and load it into the Cricut and cut. THIS is what we want for a project like this. Actually, this is probably the choice you want for the majority of the projects that you will be doing with your Cricut. Click on this second preview and then save your image, and it will now show up in your uploaded images.
Now you can click on it to add it to your Design Space canvas.
Once you have it on your Design Space canvas, decide which half of the sunburst you want to use, or if you are going to use all of it for a full page. For me, I wanted to use just a portion of the template so I used Contour to turn off the pieces for half of the design. Contour allows you to hide or remove portions of a cut file. I like this function since it allows me to customize existing designs. The button is in the lower right corner of the screen, indicated by the blue arrow in the image below.
Remember, the black lines represent what will be cut with the Cricut so if we were to cut the image as it is now, it would cut out a large rectangle with the outlines of all of the triangles inside of it.
When I click on Contour a new screen opens up, like the one in the image below. The first thing I am going to do is click on the large rectangle which tells the Cricut that we no longer want to cut the outlines of the image, but we want to cut the individual inside pieces of the image.
If you are watching the Design Space canvas as you click on that first rectangle in the Contour window, you will see the image change to a solid filled in shape like in the image below. The entire image is solid black now, so the Cricut will now cut the triangle slices of the sunburst instead of the outline of the triangles.
Now I am going to continue to use Contour to turn off the triangle slices on the right side of the image since I don’t want to cut the full rotation of this sunburst. I really only need part of it for the border edge that I am doing for the layout. I can either click on the triangle slices on the right side panel, under the blue arrow in the image above, or I can click on the portions of the shape in the small preview. If this is confusing, watch the video at the end of this post and you will see all of the steps come together.
Next, I resized the template to be 12 inches in height, so that it would match my scrapbook page. I do this by clicking on the image and then changing the height to 12 in the size indicated by the blue circle on the top toolbar.
Next step is to duplicate this image, since I want to set up some of the pieces to cut from black, some of the pieces to cut from red, and some of the pieces to cut from white. You can either right click on the image to get the duplicate function, or you can click on the duplicate button in the upper right corner of the screen.
Next, change the color of two of the images. Make one red, and make one white. To change the the color just click on the image and then click on the small square on the top panel and pick the color you want to assign to the shape.
Now since we don’t want to cut all of the triangles out of all three of these colors, we will use Contour again to turn off the triangle slices that we don’t need for each color. This would probably be easier to understand in the video, but here is an image to show you how each section will look after you have used Contour.
Once I have the correct triangles turned off for each section the three colored pieces will look like this.
Just for a visual, I have lined up these layers on top of each other so you can see how they line back up. It is kind of like a puzzle! This is the way you will put these triangles together after you cut them from the colored card stock.
Now that I have everything set up to the correct size and colors in Design Space, I can click make it and it will cut each piece out of the various colors of cardstock that I wanted to use for this project.
If you want to see all of that come together in a video, you can watch this.
Now let's start to put all of this together on to the scrapbook page. I just used my tape runner and glue pen to add the adhesive and attach the pieces to my scrapbook page.
Here is a close up so you can see it coming together. I do suggest doing your corner pieces first and then working out from there. That way if there is a little gap like I got between the black and the main page piece you can cover that with a straight pieces of cardstock.
This picture shows the addition of long straight piece of cardstock to cover the small gap I had.
One additional thing that I wanted show you that I did on this layout is for the pieces that I matted the photos too. I used a red marker to just go along the edges of the matting piece to darken the edges. This helps to define these pieces more and give them some depth. In the image below the piece on the left does not have any marker ink added to it. The one on the right, I did add the marker ink. The difference is very subtle but I like it.
For this one, I did not follow my own advice of starting with the corner pieces, so there is a slight gap on each side of one of the white polka dot pieces, but since the scrapbook page that I attached this to is also white, you don't really notice it. The reason there is a gap there is because Cricut Design Space removed the space for the black lines of the template. If I was just removing that line between two pieces, you probably would not even notice it, but when you remove that small thin black line for 5+ pieces, all of those tiny parts adds up to a small gap.
So when I do this next time I will start at the corners and then work to the middle. Then the gaps will fall in the middle and be easier to cover up with a straight piece.
One thing that I really like to make with my Cricut is cards. Instead of spending a lot of time in the store looking for the perfect card, I can easily go to my craft room and pick some materials and make a unique and custom card for anyone in my life.
For this card, I used a sheet of patterned cardstock, some solid colored cardstock, a sheet of Illusion Film and photo corners.
I actually found this card design in Cricut Design Space, but you could create something like this on your own also. I set the base of the card as a soft teal, but I will cut it with the patterned cardstock. The darker teal color are actually pieces that will be cut out from the card base.
This is how the card base looked after I cut it from the patterned cardstock. See the little openings that it cut where the teal illusion film will show through.
Next, on the inside of the card I placed a piece of the illusion film. You can see that I made it a little bit smaller than the side of the card.
I placed photo corners in all four corners of the illusion film to hold it in place. I used the photo corners since tape and glue just do not work well with this product. This way the glue is on the photo corner, and those hold the firm film piece in place.
Now I just stick that in place on the inside of the card front.
I finished off the card by adding the solid colored lilac letters on the front of the card. Now you see the words with the soft shadow effect of the illusion film showing through the openings in the card.
I am in an amazing group on Facebook called Happily Ever After Cricut Crafting, which you can find HERE. The designers in there make these amazing svg files for the members to use for personal use only.
I was making some shirts for a young girl that lives near us, and she LOVES Star Wars. Her Dad brought me this soft green shirt that has sparkles all over it and I found the perfect Star Wars image for it!
The blue marks are a paint splatter effect I added with the Siser Easy Weed vinyl. I cut the image of Rae out of Siser Charcoal Grey, which I think worked so much better for this shirt than using black. It is a softer look. The silver speckles that you see is the glitter in the shirt.
Check out these bright and bold colors from Siser vinyl! I absolutely love them! I used the EasyWeed Lemon Yellow, Sky Blue and the StripFlock Florescent Red for this shirt, and the colors really pop off of the navy shirt.
Here is a close up to show you that there is texture on the StripFlock Florescent Red. It is a little thicker than the EasyWeed and it has a very soft texture to it.
If you need some new summer clothing, this would be a great way to design your own shirts. Just order some blank shirts from your favorite store and start to decorate. If you are looking for images that are already made into svg files to perfectly cut you can check out my post HERE about finding free svg files. I found this design on LoveSVG.com
If you have never worked with a SVG file that you download from a site like LoveSVG, you can check out my video HERE that will show you the steps to follow.
What have you been doing during quarantine? I have been doing some extra crafting!
One thing that I really love about having a Cricut machine is that I can make custom designed shirts for friends and family. For example, I was able to take a design from LoveSVG and download it to cut on my Cricut machine.
If you want to check out all of the Covid related designs on LoveSVG just click HERE.
After that, you can follow the directions in THIS VIDEO to learn how to bring that design into Cricut Design Space and cut it with your Cricut.
I cut this with Siser EasyWeed vinyl in the new spring color Wisteria. First I measured the front of the shirt to determine the amount of space that the design should be. I wanted it large, but not so big that it went into the armpits. Then I resized the image to be that same size and cut it on my iron on setting. Make sure to mirror or flip your images before cutting with iron on material, since you are cutting it from the back side of the vinyl.
A lot of you know that I have made videos about Cricut Design Space and share them on my YouTube channel. Earlier this year someone asked me if I could do Design Space videos specifically for the iPad. So in February I purchased an iPad so that I could begin that process.
Originally, my plan was to sell this document for $5 per copy, to pay for my time to create it and make all of the videos that go along with it . . . but with everything that is going on in the world today, and so many people being out of work, I just could not bring myself to ask people to pay for this. So here it is . . . my Teach Me Cricut Design Space for the iPad.
On my resources page, I do include a link with a way that people can donate money as a way to say thank you for this document. You can donate by clicking HERE.
