Hello, everybody, my name is Jennifer Maker. Today I am showing you how to make awesome. Knockout designs in Cricut Design, Space on The Great Maker Show & Tell ( light guitar music ). So almost exactly one year ago, I showed everyone how to create a knockout design. Sign in Cricut Design Space and if you’re not familiar with this particular design trend, a knockout is where you superimpose letters over another word and sometimes also add whitespace around the letters so that they stand out more and look more amazing. You’Ll most commonly see this design with a pair of first names, knocked out of a surname just like this, and it creates a lovely family sign. It’S very pretty and stylish
Well, in my tutorial, I showed you three ways to make them using Cricut Design, Space, Inkscape and illustrator, but things change as they do, and the method to make these in Cricut Design Space is no longer working.I believe that one day this will be a built-in function. In Cricut Design Space because I’m just sure it must be one day, but we don’t have it now and you all have nut cups to do now. Don’T you And yes, you could use illustrator, Inkscape, Fonto or PDF screenshots to do this, but it’s really nice not to have to worry about another piece of software. Now isn’t it So I’m going to show you how to create and make a knockout design in Cricut Design Space with a method that works as of right now, which is late December 2019, and I feel very confident that this method will will work well into 2020 And beyond.Now what I love about this knockout design project is how simple it really is.
We can over complicate things or we can do things the easy way. This tutorial is all about the easy way. Yes, there are other ways to do this and I list them all on my blog over at Jennifer maker.com/knockouts, if you’re interested, but using third-party software isn’t easy for everyone and the method that I’m about to teach. You will work on all versions of Cricut Design Space, including the iPad iPhone and Android versions, and should keep working for pretty much forever. So, if you’d also like to make this pretty home tile that I just made, it literally took me less than 30 minutes. From start to finish, to make
You’Re going to need a ceramic tile that you can get from your local home improvement store for like a few bucks, they’re, so affordable You’re, also going to want some permanent adhesive vinyl. I used Cricut premium vinyl. You also need transfer tape to transfer your design onto your tile or your sign or whatever you want to use.Tools that come in useful, are a scraper, a weeder, a Cricut knife, a pencil and a ruler, and you can cut this on your Cricut, Explorer or Cricut. Make your cutting Machine
Now the design itself is made entirely in Cricut Design Space using free fonts. It’S really easy! So, let’s head on over to Cricut Design Space, so I can show you how to make a knockout design together and then we will go through the entire process of creating one of these really cool knockout designs on a ceramic tile. Can you say last minute, gifts for everyone? Let’S do this Step. One measure your tile or other surface.Always know what the dimensions of the tile sign or other surface that you plan to put your knockout design on, so you can properly design it in the next step.
Step two make a neck out design in Cricut Design Space. So here we are in Cricut Design Space on a brand new canvas. Now, let’s start by defining the borders of our sign, We’re going to go to templates and we’re going to choose a basic canvas which is right here, basic canvas and we want a rectangle square, but we want it to be. Instead of like a cutting mat size, we want to make it a custom size and we’re going to make it 11.75 inches, because that is the size of our sign and, let’s change the color to something that’s close to our sign.
Sort of a marbly color: this will work Now we know what we need we’re dealing with where we’re working. Okay, Now there’s two elements to a knockout: There’s the main words and the accent words. Let’S first do the main words: that’s the big chunky, part
Click on text and type home, and we’re going to make this bold and we’re going to make it bigger than this. Something more like this all right, ,’cause we’re going to make a home sign.So. These are our main words. Now we need our accent words, and this is typically done in a script font, but you can do whatever you’d like I am going to do it in my one of my favorite accent, fonts, which is I love glitter, and I’m going to type welcome to our Okay, so it’s just going to say: welcome to our home and I’m going to change the font to I love glitter, and this is a free font, that’s available online and you can find it at Jennifermaker.
Com/Iloveglitter and you’ll need to install it. I have a tutorial on how to install phones too. So here is our font and, of course, doesn’t look so great we’re going to fix this up real, quick. So, first of all, our letters are look weird right. This is a script font and a script font. Your letters should be touching right.
Cells like cursive, so what we want to do is adjust our letter spacing until the letters touch I’m going to make this a little bigger. So we can see this better.To. Do this we’re just going up to the letter space menu and we’re going to click this down arrow here down arrow until our letters are touching each other as well as can be, We may not be able to get them perfect, but we can get them really Close So that looks nearly perfect
The biggest issues I’m seeing are that. Well really, this looks fine. The problem now is that the spacing between the words is weird. The cool thing about this particular font is that it has special glyphs that we can put in between our words to make the cursive all go. Together.So, it’s one lovely flowing line and the way that you access the glyphs is different, but whether you’re on the Mac or on a pc or you’re using your iPad. I am using my Mac right now. So I’ll show you how we do that.
I go to font book and this is my fountain book screen right here and I choose. I love glitter and I can see all of the characters in the I love glitter font and I would like to put hearts in between the letters.In between the words. I should say So: all I have to do actually is select this and copy it on my keyboard, so command C and then go back to Cricut Design, Space, double click. The letters here which brings up my Text Edit box and then put select that space in between my letters and paste the copied glyph in See, isn’t that pretty. And if I go back to font book, it actually has some pretty swoops and I’m going to copy those and put them in the front and back of my name or my word my phrase. Whatever we’re going to call this and we’re going to do this, one as well,
There we go To access the glyphs on a PC, go to your Start, menu down in the lower left, corner and search on character, map and open that up and once you’re inside there you’ll want to search for the fonts. So, for example, search for I love glitter, and then you have access to all of the clips. Just like you saw me with font book on the Mac, and this is how you can see all of the cool things You just click on it and then you click select and then you click copy. And then you go back to Cricut Design Space and you paste it in and that’s it that’s all you do on the PC. Isn’T that lovely
And it’s nearly perfect. The only problem I see is between the t and a heart here and we can fix that. What we do is we actually go up to advanced ungroup to letters, and then we select all of the text that we want to change to move. I want to move this closer.So. I selected all of this text. Then I’m going to hold down my shift key and I’m going to click and drag it over until it meets just like this, and now it’s awesome and now I select everything and I do weld and this text is ready to go. So we now have our main words and we have our accent: words.
Now, in a knockout, you put your accent words on top of your main words like this and let’s change the font, so we can see that better Font color we’re going to change this to red. So technically I could do a couple things right now and be done and ready to cut this out before. Let me give you an example: We’re going to duplicate this, so we have an extra copy Whenever I do any kind of design work. It’S really nice to have up to work on a duplicate copy, so you always have that unmodified copy to play around with
So I could simply select both of these layers. Right here.Our accent, word layer and our main word layer and click slice. And if I do that, what happens? Is the letters get sliced out of the word home and we can just delete all of the extra bits here and we are left with something that looks like that. Remove this out of the way. So we’re left with something that looks like this. And then we have our welcome lineup here, going to duplicate that, and we can put that right into place right here and we can if we want, go ahead and cut this out right now. This looks nice
The problem is that – and you probably can see this – is that really the welcome to our line is not very easy to read on top of the big, bold home.So, what a lot of people like to do is create an outline around this text. This is where the complicated part comes in right. So, if you don’t want to do this, you’re good to go Have fun, you can move on and start doing your vinyl or whatever you want.
If you want this line to show up better, you need an outline around it. There’S a lot of different ways to do that. You can do it. Most of them are outside Cricut Design Space. You can do it in Inkscape. You can do an Illustrator, you can do it in an iPad, app called Fonto. You can even do it by doing some funky things with print, then cut and save to pdfs and importing
Honestly, most people find all of those very challenging If you’re, not one of those people and you get it awesome, that’s great, but for the rest of you who are challenged by all these extra things, I want to show you a simpler way that you can do This right inside Cricut Design, Space, okay, So let’s go ahead and get rid of this one. So we have just this welcome to our home and it’s just these two layers right.
So what we’re our goal is to get this welcome to our home, like we want an outline around it, so that our line stands out more against our main word. So let me tell you how I’m doing it So what I do first of all, like I said before, duplicate everything, so you have an extra copy of it and we’re just going to put this down here out of our way.Now we’re going to zoom in to Our original version, which is right up here, so we can see it just like this – This is close enough and what we’re going to do is really not that difficult
We’Re actually just simply going to duplicate this layer, our welcome layer many times and offset it each time, just a little bit creating a bubble around our words. So let me show you what I mean, So I am going to duplicate this right now, I’m going to right click on my layer and choose duplicate, and I get this So I actually wan to bring it up. So it’s essentially on top of I what I have right now, but I’m going to move it down just a touch like this
I can move it down more. I can do kind of something like this, which is pretty good. Actually, I think I’ll do this.So we’re going to move it down. Okay, We’re going to duplicate it again, oops and this time I’m going to move it. So here is where the original was, and this time I’m going to move it like one over like this
Okay, you see what I’m doing, Duplicate again, click and drag it, and this time it’s going to go up a bit and again and this time it’s going to be over a bit and if you need to you can scroll over so that you can see all Of your lines, right.So, you see what I’m doing here right Now. I want to go ahead and we’re going to do this step by step, so you can see how to do this and refine this So right now. This will definitely create an outline around our word and I’m going to select all of those layers, and you can see five layers. We can see them over here and we’re going to click on weld just like that, and we get this kind. It’S kind of a a definitely bubblyer word a little bit rough around the edges, but still pretty good, and now we want to select this new line that we’ve made and our home line and we’re going to slice it
So you can see how this works, So we’ve sliced it now, let’s still delete all the extra bits.Is that the extra – not quite This last one always gets behind here All right. So let’s go down here and grab a copy of our because remember we made a copy of this
So, let’s duplicate that line, So we always have that there and let’s bring it into position to see how it looks So you see we’re, definitely creating a bubble around our words. It’S a little rough yes, but it was also really quite easy to do So. You can say hey. This is good enough for me and continue on at this point and just cut out these two layers, or you can continue to refine this
So let me show you how to do that there’s several different ways. The first way is, of course, is to keep doing what you were doing So: keep duplicating this layer over and over and over making small changes filling in little bits that bug you right. So just just sort of filling in the divots filling in the corners. However, you want to think about it and just putting them into place, and you know trying to get each time all four of your corners, like this
So we’re going to weld this just like before So weld everything together Now we want to go ahead and slice, two layers just like before, So we select both layers and we click on slice, and we get all these extra bits here that we don’t need, and We can delete all of those and we wound up with a more refined version of what we had. Let’S take a look at it again:
Let’S duplicate our welcome line, move it up into position and put it into place, See it’s definitely looking better. Now you can just literally just keep doing this slices. You will get a smoother less choppy image. We can fill in these corners right here and here all of this, but if you don’t want to just keep duplicating there’s other things that you can do.So, let me show you how to slice with shapes
Click on shapes over on the left side and click circle and resize. This circle that we have here Now, for example, one of the things that bugs me is this L has like a little bump on top. So this is easy to fix. I can put the circle where that L top of the L should be where it should be nice and smooth. Just like this, Let me zoom in a little bit more, so you can see that better
So see, there’s the L and we’ve covered up that little bump. Now we can select the circle and our home and do a slice and we get rid of all the extra bits that we don’t need and we have a much smoother shape to our L and you can go through and touch up everything this way. If you want, but the truth of the matter is, is it really isn’t going to be that noticeable once it’s on once you cut it out, especially if you’re putting on anything that has any sort of a textured surface.It’s going to actually blend in, and that makes This technique really good for something like a sign because usually it’s wood or it’s a textured ceramic or something like that You’re, not even going to notice these little divots. You really aren’t and that’s how you can make an icon in Cricut Design Space without ever leaving. Cricut Design Space and I’m going to go ahead and touch it up a little bit more and I will speed up the video so that you can just watch me work and doesn’t have to go quite so, quite so slowly ( light guitar, music, ) And there We go that really wasn’t that difficult and we have a lot of control over how we want it to look.
You can make this bolder if you’d like you, just need to do a little bit more layering and moving things out with your duplicate layers. Just remember the key is to duplicate weld slice and then delete the extra things and you just rinse and repeat until you’re happy with your design.Now. Let’S turn this into an awesome, welcome to our home sign and we can go ahead and remove all of this extra bit here and we’re going to make this smaller, and I can’t help but notice that our canvas is missing. Let’S go back up a templates and re-add that Sometimes it happens and we’re going to change this to custom 11.
75 and we’re going to change the color to gray All right. So here is our home part, and I want I actually want our swishes to kind of extend out beyond the edges of the sign. So I’m going to do it like this and then down here. I am simply going to put our names makers and naturally we’re going to use a different font than that will match the other one Cricut sands, and that’s right here and we’re going to make this centered and move it up like this. And then I’m going to put an established line est 2017 and make this a little smaller and put this right under here. And finally, I want a little little hearts or something at the bottom here, and I know that this font has some extra glyphs in it. So I’m going to go back to the font book and I know there’s a part where it’s got like three hearts: right: here.I’m going to those and paste them in and make sure we change our font back to I love glitter. There we go and that will go right down here and I will make that right as well. So our heart lines are both red
Everything else is black, and this will look beautiful All right, so I’m going to Center everything down here. So I’m going to select all this plus home, but not our welcome to I mean I guess we could select everything. Let’S just select everything and see what happens and then go up to a line and choose center horizontally and and everything is centered, but our red line is a little bit off. So, let’s just only because it wasn’t perfectly centered before which we could have done. But I was looking at something else when I did it, it’s really very close and there we go
This is ready to go, oh, except we need to attach the lines that we extra lines that we made. So what you want to do is select everything. That’S black everything, that’s one color and it should all be attached. Just like this. Now, these letters will stay. I mean you, don’t have to do this, You could do it individually, but this is much better.
It’Ll be much easier to make sure everything is centered and straight. If you do it like this trust me – and this is now ready to go and cut onto vinyl, So we can click make it, and it’s going to cut this layer in black and it’s going to cut this layer in red.Now. You’Ll. Note that it’s actually! This is 13 inches long. Maybe I don’t actually want that. Let’S go back!
I don’t really want to cut that much vinyl, So I don’t really need it to be this long. Do I I just want it to fit on a 12 inch mat, So let’s select everything and drag it in so that it’s under 11 and 1/2 inches. So it fits on our mat because that’s useful, I guess I didn’t really have to have them at the edges like that.
That actually still looks really nice. I like that. I guess I could bring this down a little bit kind of balance, things out There we go that looks good All right now, let’s click make it and see. If we got everything on to, we did So there’s our black layer and here’s our red layer, and this is much better
That was too much vinyl before So. Let’S go ahead and make this and put it all together For step. Three you’re going to cut out your vinyl.So, take a piece of vinyl and I’m using Cricut premium. Vinyl, that’s cut to the right size and put it onto your green standard, grip, cutting mat and turn on your Cricut make sure the fine point blade is installed. Load your mat and press the flashing button to start cutting
Step four weed your vinyl Now, once your vinyl is all cut you’re going to want to remove the excess vinyl from your design. I like to put in my vinyl on a cutting mat, because it’s often usually like really curly and kind of hard to manage, and if I put it on the mat, it’s a lot more stable, So just remove all of the excess vinyl. Now, when it comes to weeding one of the script fonts, especially, I love glitter. It’S going to take some patience.
It’S a very skinny font and it’s the lines are very delicate, especially if you make a small sign like I have here, and one thing I want to note is that the first time I cut it, I had the hardest time with it, and I thought it Was just me and then I ,’cause I’m not. I really am not very good at weeding, but by the end of it I’m like. Maybe it’s not me, and so I took my blade and I cleaned it with an aluminum foil ball and I cut it again and a second time it we did much better. You can see the difference here between the two.The top one is the first one. I did and the bottom one is the second one I did with the cleaner blade and you can see that it weeded much better without any mistakes. Step five apply, transfer tape to your vinyl. Now it’s important that you put a piece of transfer tape on your finished, weeded vinyl.
That’S how you’re going to transfer it from the carrier sheet? That’S currently on onto your tile, your sign or whatever you’re putting onto I’ll. I recommend use the taco method, So you fold your transfer tape like this, and then you apply it to the center of your design and then smooth from the center outward and that helps to minimize wrinkles and bubbles, and it works really well and once you have That transferred you can just pull it right off of your mat. If you still have on your mat like I did and then you’ll want to take the backing off.So the carrier sheet, that’s on the back of your vinyl that has to be removed as well. Now the one for the red vinyl just came off right now, without the black and you’ll note that I’m doing one of the red lines, but not both of the red lines together and that’s because, but for that second line. The line with our knockout text. We’Re going to want to do that separate so that we can make sure it’s perfectly aligned.
Step six apply vinyl to your tile or sign. This is the last step So get at your tile measure this, where the center is Just use. A pencil’cause it’ll just come off later and mark the center at the top of the bottom, and I also recommend that you draw a straight line across the middle approximately, where you think your main word is going to go.So just to help. You make sure that it’s straight
So you want to locate where the center of your vinyl decal is and then make sure that you’re putting that into the middle of your tile, where you marked it I’d also compare your main word to your drawn line. To make sure it’s straight Now, look the nice thing actually about putting in something that has a rough surface like this tile is that it’s actually pretty easy to reposition, if you don’t get it in quite the right spot, the first time, unlike other surfaces like say Glass, which, once you stick it on there, it’s staying on there for good, It’s that you’re going to be peeling it back up, but on the ceramic, with the rougher surface that you can reposition it and until you have it in the right spot Once it’s in The right spot you’ll want to use your scraper to scrape that down really well it’ll. You know put some effort into it, because the surface is rough.
It does take a little extra time and effort to make sure that that vinyl is adhered well to your tile and when it’s all done start pulling at one corner.But, then the vital starts lifts up as you’re pulling it off just use. Your scraper just put the transfer tape back down, Use your scraper to really really work at that corner or that edge that’s pulling up and then slowly work. Your way, all the way across until your entire image is transferred. Now it’s time to put our knockout line onto our main vinyl, So peel off the carrier sheet that you’ve already transferred to your transfer tape. Of course,
This is probably the trickiest part to the whole project. You just want to line it up so that you have an even amount of white space, all around your knockout text, and it might take a little bit If you’re working on a tile like this. You can reposition it If you’re not you’ll want to be more careful Once you’ve got it in place, just scrape it down, so it’s really well adhered, and then you can carefully remove the transfer tape.
It’S very thin vinyl, so you’ll want to hold it down as you pull it off, so that it doesn’t want to pull it off of your surface, but otherwise that’s it. It’S pretty awesome and don’t forget to remove any pencil line that you put on your tile. Just erase it comes right off, and that is it. That’S all. You’Ll have to do to make one of these They’re very quick and easy
You can make them for all of your friends and family. They don’t cost very much at all and there’s such a lovely personal gift. I love making these and I hope that you will too (. Mumbles ) designs are so pretty and I love seeing your designs. Please be sure to share a photo of your designs over in my Cricut crafters Facebook group at Jennifermaker.
Com/Cricutcrafters and if you get stuck anywhere during this process, just leave me a question here in the comments or ask in our group. We all love to help. Don’T forget I’m giving away a Cricut Cutting Machine’cause. I know lots of people out. There still need one. You can enter for the chance to win your own cutting Machine and get all the details over at jennifermaker.com/Cricutgiveaway and that’s it for today.
Now, tomorrow, I’m not quite sure what I want to show you.Either. I want to show you how to make cute socks with sayings in the bottom right Perfect for like hanging out for the holidays, or I want to show you how to make winter window clings, Which one would you rather see? Socks or window clings.
Let me know in the comments below and remember, I’m always open to your project ideas. Do you have things that you want to make? Let me know because if you can tell me what you want to make, I can show you how to make it and I think that’s it.Until tomorrow. This is ( laughs ) Until tomorrow this is Jennifer Maker, reminding you to craft the life. You love
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