Read my full disclosure to learn more I understand that learning a new skill can be a little frustrating at times, but when you take the time and are patient with it, you can become an expert. Since most of the screenshots you’ll see below are taken from my iPad, I want to point out the differences you’ll find between the Ipad and iPhone version. Luckily for you and me, there isn’t a big difference between these two options. Can you imagine trying to learn two different applications? The only small difference between the iPhone and Ipad app is the SPACE MANAGEMENT.
You will notice it first on the top panel where it is sold (Home – Canvas – Do) on the iPad you will always see the names, but on the phone, sometimes, you will see a rectangle divided into three equal parts. However, both represent the same thing. Something to keep in mind is that most of the time, when you touch something, the menus are very long, so with your phone you will have to slide them left and right to see all the options, sometimes also with the iPad. In addition, since space is very limited, on your phone, the layers button will be disabled several times when you touch other functions.
On iPad, you can leave the Layers button visible at all times. Every time you open your application for the first time, you will be in the home section, from here you can choose a project ready to cut, images or Create a new project. This panel allows you to navigate from the canvas to your profile, projects, and also allows you to expand the canvas space to the maximum. Let’s see how all the icons work.
When you tap your profile picture, a menu will open with a couple of settings. An essential thing of this menu is the selection of machines. Before you begin the design process, be sure to select the Cricut you have (Maker or Explore). You see, Cricut Maker has options that are only available for that particular machine.
So, if you have a creator and you’re designing with Explore enabled, you won’t be able to activate the tools that are for the creator. From this menu, you can also configure your machine and also see a small overview of the application on how the machine works. If you are planning to use the Print and then Cut option with your phone or iPad, this calibration ensures that everything goes smoothly. There are other options here that I recommend you check out.
I’m not going to go into detail about them because I want to focus on the design aspect of the application. This option will be activated after an element has been placed in the canvas area. These buttons are shortcodes and represent the different views you will have while using the application. The darkest area represents your current location.
There are times, especially when you’re working on a small device, when you’ll want to see its design without distractions. When you tap this option, the Canvas Area will expand and all other menus will be hidden. To return to the standard view, tap here. Canvas is where you play with your designs, get creative and touch things up before you cut them.
The canvas area is divided by a grid. I think this feature is great because every little square you see on the grid helps you visualize the cutting mat. You can change the measurements from inches to cm and turn the grid on and off by tapping the Settings icon located in the bottom panel of the app. Each time you select one or more layers, the selection is blue and you can modify it from all four corners.
The red x is for removing layers. The upper right corner will allow you to rotate the image. However, if you need a specific angle, I recommend that you use the rotation tool in the bottom panel by tapping the Edit icon. The small padlock keeps the size proportional when you increase or decrease the dimension of your layer with the bottom right button of the selection.
By touching it, it can now have different proportions. There is also a fifth option between the lock and the size option. When you touch it and drag your design, you can see it from different angles. I think this is useful if you want to see a 3D perspective (especially if you have the camera option turned on).
Once you drop it, the selection will return to its original shape. The bottom panel may seem to be the most challenging because pretty much everything is done from here. Before we start with the bottom panel, let’s see a little bit of what happens when you touch something. The bottom panel is gray and has 12 essential menus that allow you to edit your project.
Each time you tap one of the options, the icon itself will turn green and the options for that tool will take you to another window or open in a white menu, as shown in the screenshot above. You can only use one option at a time, except with the Layers option, This can be active at all times. However, on your iPhone, the layer panel can be turned off very often. This application is very robust and has most of the things that the desktop version has.
At the end of this post, there is a list of things that this app doesn’t have. The images are perfect when you are putting together your projects; with them, you can add an extra touch and personality to your crafts. You can search for them by keywords, categories or cartridges, and also search for images that you have previously uploaded to your computer or device. The cartridges are a set of images that you must purchase separately; some of them come with Cricut Access and some do not.
The ones that are not available for Cricut Access are brands such as Disney, Sesame Street, Hello Kitty, etc. Cricut has FREE images to crop every week. You can find them when you click on Categories. If you are looking for projects in the cloud, you will need the Internet; but if you are going to use images that you have on your device or tools in the application itself, you can work offline.
Every time you want to write in the canvas area, you’ll need to tap Text. After tapping, you will be asked to choose the font you want to work with; then, a small box will appear in the canvas area for you to type your text. Being able to use forms is essential. With them, you can create simple, less complicated, but still beautiful projects.
The first option is not a form, but an incredible and powerful tool called Score Line. With this option, you can create folds and mark your materials. If you want to create boxes or love everything related to card creation, Score Line will be your best friend. With this option, you can upload files and images that you want to cut.
When you tap upload, you’ll have the opportunity to choose the location of your photo, or even take one. Let’s say you’re working on an elephant. Most likely, and if it is an SVG or cut file, the elephant will be composed of different layers (the body, eyes, legs, trunk, etc.). If you want to incorporate new shapes and text, you will most likely move your elephant around the canvas area a lot.
By grouping all the elephant layers together, you can ensure that everything stays organized and that nothing falls out of place when you move them and then the canvas. Take a look at this graphic to understand how welding, joining, slicing, flattening, and contouring Attaching and separating work like grouping layers, but it’s more powerful. When you select both shapes and tap on attach, both layers will now have the same color (the color is determined by the layer on the back). This attachment will remain in place, even after I submit my project to cut it.
If you want to separate your layers, select them again and tap, separate. The welding tool allows you to combine two shapes into one. When I selected both shapes and tapped Weld, you can see that I’ve created a completely new shape. The color is determined by the layer that is on the back, so the new shape is pink.
The Slice tool is perfect for cutting shapes, text and other elements from other designs. The Flatten tool is an additional support for print and cut fill. When you change the fill from No Fill to Print, that applies to a single layer. But what if you want to do it in several ways at once? When you’re done with your design, select the layers you want to print together as a whole, and then tap flatten.
In this case, the item became Print and then Cut. That is why it no longer shows a black border, where it will go through the sheet. This option will duplicate any layers or designs you have selected in the layers panel or canvas area; this is very useful because you don’t have to recreate the layout from scratch. The Outline tool allows you to hide unwanted parts of a design, and will only be activated when a shape or design has elements that can be omitted.
When you touch the outline, a new window will appear with all the pieces of the design that you can hide on the left. For this example, I combined the original design into one shape with the welding tool. Then I wrote the outline of the word and cut it against the new shape, then I hid the inner circles of the two letters O and the inner part of the letter R. This option is only available for text layers.
When you select text and tap Isolate Layers, you can edit each letter on its own. The desktop version has more advanced options for text, but this is a good start. Perhaps one will be added to the other options. The Edit menu allows you to modify the text further (if the text is selected in the layers panel).
You can also align, arrange, and arrange all the items you have in the canvas area. Let’s see all the things you can achieve when you touch this menu. When you tap this button, you can select any font you want to use for your projects. You can filter and search for them at the top of the window.
If you have Cricut Access, you can use any font that has a small green A at the beginning of the font title. However, if you don’t have access to Cricut, be sure to use your system fonts; otherwise, you’ll be charged when you submit your project to cut. Once you choose your font, you have the option to change its style. Sometimes the font itself will have more or fewer options, the one I used for this screenshot had a lot more options.
This alignment is exclusive to text. Great for organizing paragraphs and lines of text. I can’t express enough how AMAZING these options are. This option will tell your machine what it will do with your machine.
Note that depending on which machine you have selected at the top of the window (Maker or Explore), you will have different options. This option will tell your machine when you tap Make it the tool you are going to use; there are currently seven options (Cut, Draw, Mark, Burn, Deboss, Wave, Perf). If you have a Cricut Maker, all options will be available, but if you have an Explore option, you’ll only have the Cut, Draw, and Score options. Here is a more detailed explanation of each tool.
Cut is the default line type that all elements of your canvas will have; this means that when you press MAKE IT, your machine will cut those designs. With the Cut option selected, you can change the fill of your elements, at the end of the day, this translates into the different colors of the materials you will use when cutting your projects. If you need help learning about Cricut blades and the differences, I totally recommend this definitive guide and tutorial that I prepared. It’s the best thing on the web, just like this tutorial When you assign this line type, you’ll be asked to choose any of the Cricut pens you have (you need specific pens, unless you have a third-party adapter).
When you select your design, the designs in the canvas area will be outlined, with the color of the pen you chose. The score is a more powerful version of the score line found within the Shapes menu. When you assign this line type to a layer, all designs appear hatched or discontinuous. For this type of project, you will need the score pen or the score wheel.
However, keep in mind that the wheel only works with Cricut Maker. Engraving, Deboss, Wave and Perf (new) These are the newest tools Cricut has released for the Cricut Maker machine, and with them, you can create amazing effects on different types of materials. They work with the adaptive quick-swap tool, so if you already have one, you can buy the tips. I just got these tools in the mail, and once I have tutorials for them, I’ll link them.
The fill option is mainly used for printing. It will only be activated when you have Cut as the “linetype”. No padding means you won’t print anything, basically it’s when you’re just cutting your design out of your materials. Printing is by far one of the best features that Cricut has.
This option allows you to print your designs and then cut them; this is quite practical and what motivated me to get the Cricut in the first place. Everything you create or write on the Cricut Design Space canvas has a size. You can modify the size of the element itself (when you touch it). However, if you need an item to have an exact size, this option will allow you to do so.
Something fundamental is the small blockage of that measurement. When you increase or decrease the size of an image, the proportions are always locked. When you touch the small lock, you tell the app that you don’t want to keep the same dimensions. Like size, rotating an element is something that can be done very quickly from the canvas area.
However, some designs need to be rotated at a specific angle. If that is the case for you, I recommend that you use this feature. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time struggling to get an item to tilt the way you want it to be. If you need to reflect any of your designs in Cricut Design Space, this is a great way to do it.
You can move your items by specifying where you want that element to be located in the areas of the canvas. It’s handy, but it’s a more advanced tool. I don’t use it much because I can move better with the alignment tools I mentioned earlier. When you work with multiple images, text and designs, the new creations you add to the canvas will always be in front of everything.
However, some of the elements of your design must be on the back or front. With the option to organize, you can organize items very easily. One good thing about this feature is that the program will know which element is on the front or back, and when you select it, the design space will activate the options available for that particular element. This feature allows you to align all your layouts and is activated when you select two or more items.
If you want the same spacing between the elements, it takes a long time to do everything on your own, and it’s not 100% correct. The “distribute” button will help you with that. For it to be activated, you must have at least three items selected. Each color in the canvas area represents a different material color.
If your design has several shades of yellow or blue, are you sure you need them? If you only need one shade of yellow, like this example. Just tap and drag the tone you want to get rid of and drop it on the one you want to keep. When you tap the layers icon, a slide-out panel will open on the right. From here, you can see the linetype of each layer.
Before we go into all the details and set you up for success, let me give you a little introduction to what a cape is. Layers represent each element or design that is in the canvas area. Think of it as clothes; when you dress, you have several layers that make up your outfit; and depending on the day or time of year, your outfit can be simple or complex. Therefore, for a frosty day, their capes would be underwear, pants, shirt, jacket, sock, boots, gloves, etc.
The same goes for a design. Depending on the complexity of the project you’re working on, you’ll have different types of layers that will make up your entire project. For example, let’s say you’re designing a Christmas card. Maybe a text that says Merry Christmas, a tree, the card itself, maybe also an envelope? What I mean is that all the small designs and elements that are part of that project are layers.
Some layers can be modified; however, other layers, such as JPEG and PNG images, cannot do so; this is due to the nature of the file or the layer itself. For example, a text layer can be converted to other types of layers, but doing so will lose the ability to edit that text. As you progress, you’ll learn more about what can and can’t be done with layers. These three options are located at the bottom of the layers panel and, depending on the layers, you select to duplicate, hide, or delete.
This option will duplicate any layers or designs you have selected in the layers panel or canvas area. The small eye that appears at the end of the layers panel represents the visibility of a design in areas of the canvas. When you are not sure if an element looks good in the canvas area, instead of deleting it, tap the small eye to hide that design. This option will delete any items that you have selected in the canvas area or in the layers panel.
Sometimes, while we work, we make mistakes. These little buttons are a great way to correct them. Tap Undo when you create something you don’t like or make a mistake. Tap Redo when you accidentally delete something you didn’t want to delete or modify.
When you tap the Camera button, you can see what the camera shows. NO, you can’t take a photo or use it for your design; this is primarily a visual aid for you. When you tap on the settings, you can choose whether to use metric units or not. Also, if you prefer to work with clean canvas, without any grid, you can turn it off.
Finally, “Make it” is the latest icon in the Cricut Design Space app; tap on it once you’re done with your design and you’re ready to cut it. If you need to cut more than one project, this is the place for you to do it. Tap the small square in the top left corner of your device. In the lower left corner, there is a small icon called SnapMat.
This is a very good tool for you because it allows you to visualize and then choose where to cut your designs precisely. When you tap this icon, your camera will activate and then you’ll take a picture of your mat (with the material you want to use already on it), then you can move your design wherever you want it to be. When you’re ready to cut, tap continue. Here you will be given the option to choose your materials and the specific blade and other accessories you will need.
Although the Design Space app is complete, you can do just about anything you can think of. There are some features that the desktop version has. Valentine’s Day Coloring Markers Free Printable Cricut EasyPress 2 Review — Is it Worth It, Do You Need One? It can be the file itself. Do you know how to change the background color of DS on iPad? I’m trying to make die cut stickers, but I can’t see the outside white part with sticker because it blends into the background.
There is no way to do it from the phone. However, there are some options for the iPhone and iPad when it comes to design spaces. You can use the Cricut Design Space app that is available for download on the App Store or Google Play Store. Create a fun DIY t-shirt without having to turn on the computer.
With the right apps on an Apple iPad Pro, you can do a DIY project with just your iPad Pro and Cricut cutting machine. To use Cricut Design Space, you’ll want the best tablet on the market, and Apple’s iPad Pro, is it?. I have a Cricut air 2 that I have to use with my iPad, I wonder if there are any hard books I can buy to help me with everything. You can access your projects from any compatible PC or Mac, or from an iPad with the Cricut Design Space app, by signing in to Design Space with your Cricut Cloud account.
Not only does this iPad exceed your expectations of being able to handle many applications on a large screen, it is also the best iPad available for use with Cricut Design Space. Overall, this new iPad is a perfect premium-looking tablet at an affordable price, and every designer will love the fluidity with which Cricut’s design space works. . .