Hello and welcome to Craft with Sarah and another Cricut craft tutorial. A couple of months ago,
I released this layered birthday design into my free designs on my website
and it's quickly become one of the most downloaded files. I've loved seeing all of your papercraft
projects that you've made using it, however I got some comments asking if there could be a version
that you could add your own text to. That was difficult to do on the existing design because the
top of the little borders goes around the Happy Birthday so it would have looked a little bit
strange if you'd have taken the text off to add your own, so guess what we've done? That's right,
we've modified the design so that you can add any text you want into the middle. The edges
on the top of this one are nice and smooth so whatever text you put in the middle, it will match
perfectly. In this video, I'm going to show you how to add your text, choose your fonts and
make sure it's all perfectly sized and then we'll stick it all together. Let's get started!
You can download the free cutting file for this project at craftwithsarah.com/free-svgs or follow
the link in the description of this video to go straight to the download page. The download comes
in a zip folder and you need to unzip this before you can upload the files into Cricut Design Space.
After you've downloaded and unzipped the folder, open up Cricut Design Space and start a new
project. Go over to upload on the left side of the screen and then click upload image. From
there you can either click browse to find the file on your computer or you can drag and drop it in.
Make sure you choose the unzipped version of the folder
and then select the file which starts SVG in the file name.
I'm going to click and drag that in and it should look like this with all of the
layers one on top of the other. If you see all the layers next to each other instead
that means you've accidentally uploaded the wrong file so if that's the case click cancel
down on the bottom right and then try again and make sure you choose the one which starts SVG.
I'm going to go ahead and press upload and then when it's finished,
it will appear in your recent uploads. So you can click on it to get a green border around the edge
and then press enter canvas.
The first thing I'm going to do is resize this. You want to make sure this padlock icon is closed.
It's open at the moment so I'm going to click on it to close it. You might sometimes need to click
it twice, it's a little bit buggy at the moment, but now that the padlock's shut, it means I only
need to change either the width or the height and then the other one will change in proportion.
I'm going to make my height 7.75 inches. Press enter on the keyboard and then you see
the width change too so now everything stays looking exactly as it should.
Before I add my wording into the middle, I'm going to change the colour of this layered design.
I think I'd like to make one which is in shades of red, white and blue.
First I'll do the background layer. So I'm going to scroll down to the bottom. Click on that layer
in the layers panel and then change the colour. This part of the video is completely optional,
you could cut it out from the colour shown on screen or you can cut it out from whatever colours
you want and if you don't want to you don't have to change it on the screen first, you can just do
it as you go, but I like to change the colours on the screen so that I know exactly what bits
of cardstock I'm going to need, especially for designs like this with lots of little pieces.
I'm going to select a very dark blue for that background and then I think a lighter blue
for the one in the middle. I'm not sure this peachy colour quite matches with the blues so
let's go for maybe just a really, really light blue in the middle. There,
okay so now I want some of these balloons to also be blue.
There are a couple of ways you can do this, you can either click on the layer in the layers panel,
for example this one which is pink at the moment and then change the colour in here and select
the one you want. In fact I'm going to go for a lighter blue for the middle of the balloons
or if you want to choose a colour that's already been selected, you can press color sync over on
the top right of the screen and then drag and drop the layers onto the colour you want to make it.
I quite like doing it this way as I find it's a bit quicker
and also for me I find it easier to see what I'm doing when I'm doing it in this view.
I also want to change the bunting to blue, but only some of it and this would be quite hard
to do on the color sync view because they all sort of look the same
so I'm going to click back to layers and then I can click through the bunting in my layers
panel and it gives a little box around it so I know which one I'm doing. Then I'll
make these I think that same blue, that's the outline and I'll also do the one down there.
Alright, next let's add some more red balloons so I'll go to color sync and
all of those purple ones, I will change to red. So the solid purple will match that solid red
and then the darker purple outlines, I'm going to move on to the darker red and I'm
going to do the same with the purple bunting and I think I'll put that on the lighter red.
There we go. Finally, I'm going to change this yellow one to white and because we don't have
any white on the page already, we can't use color sync so it's back to layers and then I will click
that one and make it a white, and then this one, I might actually just make it that very pale blue.
I'm really happy with how this is looking so I think I'm ready to add the text.
To do that, click into text on the left and then you can type out what you want to put.
I find this works best if you're doing multiple words if you do each word is a separate text layer
and that's just going to give us more scope for moving it about and making a better layout.
I'm going to be super boring and just put your text here for the sake of this tutorial,
but of course you can write whatever you want in here.
I'm going to select all of that and then choose a font. I like to use script fonts where the
letters are all touching because if you used one where all the letters are separate
that means you're going to have to stick each letter on individually with glue and that might
take a while, whereas if they're all touching it will cut as one piece which is much easier.
A font I particularly like is a Cricut Access font called BFC Coffee Shop and it looks like this,
so you can see my words my letters even are joined up, so this will all cut as one and I'll just need
to glue one bit onto the design. Let's duplicate that by right-clicking and duplicate or you can
click on it and then just press duplicate over here and let's add another word and then one more.
I'm then going to select all three of these by clicking them with my shift key held down and make
them a bit smaller and by selecting them all to do that it means they're going to change it the same
proportion so everything's going to stay looking nice and consistent. Now I'm going to have a play
fitting this onto my design. It looks like I'm going to have to make it even smaller
to get it on there. Might have my h touching that last t. Maybe tilt the your a bit so it fits.
I quite like that, but I need to change the colour to match the rest of my design.
I'm going to press color sync again and now my words are down the bottom, but you can only
see the first letter of each one. I'm going to change your to my bright blue. I missed.
There we go and then I think text and here I'll make that very darkest one. Because I've got my
text and here touching, I'm going to weld those two layers together which means they'll cut from
the same shape which means they'll be joined together so it'll be even easier to stick on.
So let's select those two layers by clicking one pressing shift and selecting the other
one and then down the bottom of the layers panel press weld. There we go so now this is one layer.
I'd quite like to raise my text up from that background a little bit with some foam pads so
it stands out, but at the moment this wouldn't be possible because the text is too narrow.
I wouldn't be able to cut my foam small enough. Luckily, Design Space has an awesome feature
called offset which will add an extra outline around the letters that I can then use to put my
foam pads on. So let's click into offset and then it loads quite big by default. Oh it's being slow,
it doesn't like that I'm recording my screen. It slows my computer right down,
but this is kind of slower than normal.
It's going to show you a little guide as to where that's going and I think that is too
big so let's try 0.15 instead and then just click away. That's also fairly big. What about 0.1?
I'm much happier with that. That'd be nice if the t and the e would touch, maybe not 0.12. It's a
bit of trial and error. No it doesn't look like I'm going to get that t touching, but never mind.
Let's go apply on that one and I'll change it to white and then do the same if you've
got any other words. So I'm going to go on my your, give that an offset. It should remember
the same number which it has done so I can just press apply and then make that white.
Because my two bits of white here are touching, I'm actually going to weld my white offset layers
together so that it will all cut as one piece, but first I'm just going to make that slightly smaller
and have a little play. Why isn't it undoing? Does anyone else find that the undo button on
Design Space at the moment is super buggy? And now it's not letting me hide my layers.
Okay, so this is a good learning point I feel. Sometimes Design Space would just
kind of stop working and you see it's done that here because it's
got a text offset, but it's still showing as black when I've clearly changed it to white.
So what I'm going to do is just save my project, close Design Space and open it up again
and then hopefully, everything will be working as it should be.
Right, here we are with the project reopened and I've lost a couple of my
changes so I want that to be white and then I changed the size of the text here a little bit.
Make it a bit smaller. I don't mind that the your is a little bit bigger. I think that's
nice, but I just need to move it around so that it's touching that offset.
Okay I quite like that and now because my white offsets are touching, I can weld them together,
so select one in the layers panel, press ctrl or shift on your keyboard and choose the other one
and then press weld.
That will move it to the top of the layers panel so I'm just going to drag it down and there we go.
That is the design all ready for me to cut and in fact, I might actually just
check I'm happy with that size which I am. Awesome! Okay, let's save this again because
I do not want Design Space to crash on me again.
In fairness, I very rarely have Design Space problems.
I think my laptop just doesn't like me recording at the same time.
Okay, now this is all ready for me to cut. So when you click make it, it will separate everything out
into the different colours. If you want to, you can change the paper size in here
and you can drag and drop things about to use less space so for example, on here it's got this
bit of bunting down the bottom, but if I drag it up there it means I'm going to use slightly less
of my piece of card which means I've got more left over for another project, another day.
When you're happy with how all of your different mat colours are looking,
press continue and it will connect to your Cricut machine.
Go ahead and get everything cut out and then we'll see how to stick it all together.
Here's my design cut out and I've actually already stuck it together
and I've done all of the layers. You can see if I hold it up to the camera, all of that lovely
depth in there. So the only thing I've got left is to add my text on the top. If you'd like to see a
video on how to stick all of the layers together, then check the description of the video as I've
included a link in there to the video on how to put this one together, so this is what I did
a couple of months ago with the Happy Birthday, that you just cut out with the Happy Birthday
and you see the outline kind of matches that. This one it goes together exactly the same for
all of this. The only thing that's different is our wording so that's what I'm going to show you.
I've already glued my words onto the white offset and what I'd recommend doing is
before you stick the wording to the bit underneath, just put all your pieces on top of
the card and that way you know that it's all going to fit and that you're happy with the positioning.
There's nothing worse than doing it one letter at a time and then realising you
can't fit the last letter on so this way it just makes it that little bit safer.
You can either glue your text on or you can use foam. I'm going to use foam for mine
and because my offset is kind of one big piece, it's going to be pretty straightforward for me.
Depending on the font you've got and whether or not you chose an offset,
you might end up having to have much smaller fiddlier letters and especially,
if they're all separate, you might want to glue it instead as it would be a little bit easier,
but I do love the effect that the foam gives so that's why I'm choosing to do mine with the foam.
I'm just peeling the tops off of those sticky bits and then bring this back my t's still in place.
Actually I think I moved the tea a bit when I moved that, but that's okay. There we go
and now I can do this t. I might need to cut my foam pads a bit smaller.
Oh no, that's going to fit perfectly there, but I'll do a smaller one for the bottom
because you don't want the foam to go over the edges,
otherwise you'll see it when you stick it on and we don't want to be able to see that firm.
Okay that there and I'll just tuck it under that balloon and there we go,
that is my layer design or possibly even a cake topper, if you put a skewer in it
and you can use this for any kind of occasion and add whatever text you want in there. You could
maybe even add a name or something like that and then you could put an age in the balloons perhaps
to make it extra personal or don't forget if you just want a Happy Birthday one, I do have
this pre-made one available which is also a free download at craftwithsarah.com/free-svgs.
I hope you enjoyed this video on how to make my layered Happy Birthday design
with your own text. If you did, please give it a thumbs up
and subscribe to my YouTube channel for lots more Cricut craft tutorials and free SVGs.
Thank you for watching, bye!