How to Navigate Cricut Design Space Like a Pro

Learn all of the ins and outs of Cricut Design Space with this simple and thorough guided tour. You’ll be Cricut-ing like a pro in no time!

Navigating Cricut Design Space like a pro

This post is sponsored by Cricut. All opinions shared are my own.

If you’re new to crafting with a Cricut (or Cricut-ing as I call it), you may feel a little (or a lot) overwhelmed when you open up Cricut Design Space. Or even if you’re a more advanced Cricut-er, there may be some ways you can customize projects that you didn’t even know about.

Whatever level of Cricut crafter that you are, this is a comprehensive guide to using Cricut’s Design Space and all that it can do.

What is Cricut Design Space?

Cricut Design Space is the design program where you create projects for any of the 3 Cricut machines. There is both a desktop version and apps for iOS and Android.

Grab a coffee and let’s take a virtual tour Design Space together. We’ll identify what everything means in each of the tool bars.

First we’ll go over all of the functions in the left toolbar.

new button in Cricut Design Space to create a new project — Click on **New** to start a new project. This will open a blank canvas (shown here).

cricut templates in Design Space — Click *Template* to see a wide variety of project blanks. They will be added to your canvas to use as a reference point for sizing/positioning your designs.

Cricut templates — Templates do not save with your projects.

Cricut ready to make projects — Cricut has a huge variety of Ready-to-Make projects that you can browse through by clicking ***Projects***. They are a great creativity jump start when you are feeling stuck!

_{When you click Image, there are many ways you can filter the more than 200k images… by Cricut Access subscription images (free to all Access subscribers, more on that later), by Operation Type (cut only, draw only, print then cut or cut and draw), Image Complexity (simple, moderate or complex), Layers (single or multi), Ownership (whether they were free or you purchased, uploaded or downloaded them), Brand (Disney, Sesame Street, etc.), Material (vinyl, iron-on, chipboard, etc.) and Language.}

cricut text box — Clicking ***Text*** will open up a text box to enter your desired text
(see below for fonts).

Cricut shapes — Click ***Shapes*** to insert a basic shape or score line into your project.

upload image in Cricut Design Space — Clicking **Upload** will allow you to upload your own images or patterns (as well as show you all of the previous images or patterns you have uploaded).

Now let’s go over all of the functions on the top of the Design Space canvas…

undo-redo in Design Space — The left and right facing arrows are **Undo** and ***Redo***.

Operation type in Design Space — Select the operation type (previously called linetype) for each layer of a design with the ***Operation*** dropdown menu. (More on the operation types later). You also select your material colors in this area.

cricut select all — Use the + inside of the square button to Select all or Deselect.

cricut edit cut, copy and paste — Use the ***Edit*** function to cut, copy and paste within a project or now even between different projects in Design Space! Hooray for that!

Cricut Design Space's new offset feature — The ***Offset*** feature has been highly requested from Cricut users and they nailed it! Use this tool to offset text, shapes or images with varying distances (as shown above).

Cricut align — Click ***Align*** for many options to align and/or distribute objects, words/phrases or images horizontally or vertically.

_{Arrange will allow you to move a subject up or back one level (Move forward or Move backward) or to move a subject all the way up or back (Send to back or Send to front).}

flip in Design Space — ***Flip*** allows you to flip an object horizontally or vertically (upside down).

Adjust the dimensions of a selection by entering the desired measurements into the ***Size*** boxes. By default, if the width is changed, the height will change along with it. If you want to change the size of one without changing the other, click on the lock button to unlock the proportions.

Use ***Rotate*** to shift words or images at an angle you specify.

Use the ***Position*** boxes to shift images or text to an exact location
(x = horizontal and y= vertical)

Cricut Design Space font selection — When in a text box selection, you can filter fonts by type, style and source… Cricut fonts, System fonts (fonts that live on your computer or device or All (both Cricut and System fonts). You can also change the font size here.

_{Use Letter Space to bring letters closer together or move them further apart. This is especially helpful to create an actual script since the letters in all fonts are separated} _{(like in the above left photo).}

_{Use Line Space to bring lines of text closer together or move them further apart.}

FLIP TOOL — Use ***Curve*** to create curved texted in whatever diameter you’d like.

Use ***Advanced*** to Ungroup to letters, lines or layers to make adjustments to only a portion(s) of your text (so that you don’t have to ungroup the entire phrase, word, line, etc.)

Now let’s head over to the top right menu of Design Space:

Click ***My Projects*** to pull up all of the projects you have ever made (that you haven’t deleted). You can search by project name and now you also have the ability to save your projects into specific collections/folders.

Click ***Save*** or ***Save As*** to save an existing project or to name a new one.

Click on the dropdown menu next to the machine name to switch between machines.

_{Click Make It when you’re ready to cut your project. Then you will see a screen with} _{all of the mats in your project.}

We’re in the home stretch! Let’s review the right tool bar!

On the top right you have visibility to the ***Layers*** of your design.

How to slice in Cricut Design Space — You can perform many of the same toolbar functions for an individual layer by right-clicking on it in the layers list.

Use the ***Color Sync*** function to drag layers to consolidate a cut to one mat.

_{Use Group and UnGroup when you want to cut something exactly as it was designed (Group) or by its individual elements (UnGroup). I often use UnGroup when I want to maximize my mat space and shift things closer together so conserve materials.}

how to duplicate a word, letter or image in Cricut Design Space — With the item you want to duplicate selected, click ***Duplicate*** to create as many duplicates or a word or image as you’d like. Click ***Delete*** to delete a selected word or image.

Last but not least, the bottom right toolbar enables you to make many custom changes to your designs.

_{The Slice function allows you to cut off a section or an element of a letter/design/image by “cutting it” with another layer. Slice will only work with 2 separate layers.}

Design Space weld function — Use the ***Weld*** function to fuse letters or images together with no seams. For example, if the text above was attached but not welded, each letter would still have individual cuts.

Cricut attach and detach — Use ***Attach*** to combine elements that should be attached together on the canvas. For example, in order for the writing in this image to be positioned exactly where it is inside of the cut, the elements have to be attached.

Cricut Design Space flatten tool for Cricut Print then Cut — Use ***Flatten*** to transform a multi-layered image into a print then cut image.

Cricut Design Space contour tool — Use ***Contour*** to hide portions of a letter or image.

That covers all of the function keys and toolbars in Cricut Design Space. Let’s dig into some of them a little more.

Cricut Operation Selection

This dropdown menu has come a long way! When I got my first Cricut the only 3 options were cut, draw and print then cut and look at all of the things you can do now!

The operation types shown in the dropdown menu will always correspond to whichever machine you are using. For example, if I was using a Cricut Joy, the Wavy cut, Perforate cut, Foil, Score, Deboss, Engrave and Print Then Cut options would not be listed because they aren’t compatible with the Joy.

The Wavy, Perforate, Deboss and Engrave operations are exclusive to the Maker only, as they work in combination with the Maker’s Adaptive Tool System and QuickSwap suite of tools. You can read much more about these here. The Foil Transfer kit can be used with the Maker or Explore Air 2.

So I hope you feel like you’re ready to conquer Design Space now and are inspired to get Cricut-ing! If you ever have any questions about Design Space (or anything else) definitely hit me up on social or email, I love to hearing from readers and am always ready to help!