Hello and welcome to Craft with Sarah. In this Design Space tutorial, I'm going to show you
how you can turn your favourite photographs of your family, your pets, or anything you like
into a pyramage topper to use on handmade cards. We're going to be taking our photos,
uploading them into Design Space and then cropping them into different size squares
which are built up with foam pads to make a 3D stacked appearance.This is a lovely
quick and easy way to make beautiful handmade personalised greetings cards. Let's get started.
In this video, I'll show you how to design your own pyramid style toppers using Cricut Design
Space. I'm going to be using a photograph of my dog to make a custom greetings card but you can
use any type of image you want including clipart graphics, watercolor graphics, photographs,
pattern paper anything you feel like putting onto your pyramid topper will work beautifully.
To start you need to get your image into Design Space so go into upload over on the left and then
upload image. You can then either click browse to find a file on your computer or drag and drop
it in. I'll drag in my photo and then you want to choose complex as the option here and then
press continue. We don't need to change anything on this screen so just press apply and continue
and then choose print then cut image and press upload.When the image is uploaded it will appear
in your recent uploads so you can click on it to get the green border around the edge and
then press add to canvas. If your image or photo is quite large this might take a few seconds. Here
we go and this has loaded in pretty big so I'm just going to resize it a fair bit smaller so it's
easier to work with. Next let's make the template for our pyramid topper. I'm doing a square one for
this video but you can use other shapes as well such as rectangles, ovals, or circles. You need
to be a little bit careful using other shapes such as hearts and stars and I'll show you why.
If I go and choose a heart, what we're going to do is cut out one big heart of the photo and
then smaller hearts on top to make the layers. However if I just copy and paste that and make
one smaller. The problem with shapes like hearts and stars that aren't the same all the way around,
is that once you start making the different layers, and don't worry I'm going to show you
how to do this properly in a minute this is just a little side point to show you,
if you're doing things like this when you start resizing them you end up with more gap around here
than you do kind of at the top and the bottom. It just doesn't quite resize in proportion.
This particular heart’s actually doing a pretty good job at resizing but if that doesn't bother
you it's absolutely fine you can definitely do a heart. But I like having the same evenly spaced
gap around all of my layers which is why I tend to stick to ovals, circles, squares and rectangles.
Alright so let's get a square and then it doesn't really matter what size you make
this because we can resize it later. So I'm going to go for 5 inches. Now I need to copy and make
a duplicate of this one which you can either do by pressing the duplicate button up here or you
can press Ctrl and C on your keyboard to copy and then Ctrl and V to post paste. Post? Paste.
So I'll do that and then we'll change the color so it's easier to see and then you need to take the
same measurement off of each side because mine's square, it's easy I can just change one and that
will change in proportion. I think I'll do half an inch off each side and see how that looks.
So this one's now 4.5x4.5 and that's quite a good amount of border. I'm happy with that.
I might go a little bit smaller. Maybe let's try 4.25.
The smaller you make it, the more of the photo you'll be able to see. So that's looking good
so I took 3 quarters of an inch off in total. Duplicate that again, make it another color and
then take a quarter 3 quarters of an inch off each side again, so this one will become 3.5.
And I’ll line it all out properly in a moment, for now I'm just making my squares.
And then this one I need to take 3 quarters of an inch off as well so this becomes 2.75.
And then do I want another one? I think this is probably going to be enough but you can
keep going as small as you want to. Alright let's select all of those by dragging a box
around them and go align and then center. So now I know they're perfectly one on top of the other.
I'm going to take my very biggest square and duplicate that so I've got a copy and
we'll use this one to cut the photo into the right size. So let's go and change it in the
operations menu to a guide, that way it turns into just an outline. It's a little hard to see on my
particular picture but now you can just about see that pink line which means I can put my photograph
to wherever I want it to appear and then select both of those and press slice.
That will cut that guide square out of the photograph. Now I can delete my guide and
then I've got my photo cut into the perfect square and my excess which I don't need so we can delete
that one. And now we can start cutting the photo into all of the different levels of the pyramid
topper. I'll need 4 of my picture in total because there's 4 layers in my pyramid. So let's just
select that lots of times then I can press select all to select the photos
and my layers and go align, center. And now everything is one on top of the other.
Alright so there's my very bottom square I can delete that one. My grey one because I've already
got my photo cut into that perfect size. So rename that Layer 1 and I'll put it to the
bottom and then hide it and then I'm going to add my pictures in the layers panel so that there's
one underneath each of my squares. And then hide them by clicking the eye that appears when you
hover over the layers panel until I've just got my next two. So my full photo and my yellow square.
Let's drag a box around those and slice.
And then we don't need the yellow square anymore so I can delete that one and then I've got my main
dog and also the outline. For now I'm going to move the outline down the bottom because
I'll show you a different way you can use this at the end. And then my photo of my dog will become
Layer 2 and I'll drag that down above Layer 1 and then hide it.
Turn on the next one, do the same thing, select both of those and slice.
Delete the orange and then the outer bit. I'm just going to move down there for now.
The bit I want to keep will rename Layer 3. Drag it down above Layer 2
and then hide it. And I've got one left to do so I'll slice those layers,
delete the blue and drag my outside down the bottom. Rename the bit I want to keep,
Layer 4 and I'll just put that down there.
Now I can turn all the pieces on and it will just look like you haven't actually done anything if
you just look at all the layers because they're one on top of the other however when you pull
them apart just by clicking and dragging, you can see we've now got the 4 layers of the pyramid.
I'm going to undo that a little bit because I want them back one on top the other because we
still need to resize this to fit the card. Select all of those and group them together at the top
and that just means when we resize it, it will all change in proportion.
I just wanted to show you these bits that we had left over around the edges,
you can use these to make a different type of topper called a tunnel topper.
It kind of works in the same way, but you'll also need one of the very bottom. So this kind
of has the opposite effect, instead of the layers coming out to you like a pyramid getting smaller,
this time it'll be more like you're looking down a tunnel. So you'd have this one of the full photo
at the bottom and then you would stack on this one on top of that, which has the smallest gap
in it. Then you do the next smallest gap and then your very top layer would be the thinnest one.
So this way you're building up your outline a bit like a shadow box and you'd be looking down
the layers going inwards instead of coming outwards like our pyramid. That's just a
great way to get another card out of all of the excess bits of the photo that we've cut apart.
But I'm not going to do that for this one so let's just delete those and I've got
my pyramid topper here. Next let's make a card for the pyramid topper to go on.
Under shapes go into square. I'm going to make a square card. I'm actually going to use a pre-made
card blank for mine because I've got some that I bought in a craft store which you've got pretty
edges on so I'm going to use that but I'll show you how to make a card blank in case you don't
have any pre-made ones. For now let's hide our pyramid topper and then my card is 5.75 inches
square so I want my height to be 5.75 and then my width to be double that which would be 11.5.
Make it white and then add a score line if you've got a scoring tool or stylus down
the middle to make it easier to fold. Go into shapes, choose a score line.
Set it to the same height as your cards, mine's 5.75 inches and then select them both and go
align, center and then press attach. Attach is what tells the Cricut to do the score line
down the middle of this piece of card and then we can get our pyramid topper and go arrange,
bring to front and then work out how big it should be on the card. I'm thinking maybe around 3.5
inches and just have it in the middle because I want to put a pretty background paper around the
side. I like to add a little pop of color behind the toppers. So this one would look nice in a red
to match the red on my dog's harness and the ball and let's go a little bit bigger so maybe 3.75.
And just position that, go on underneath.
I always have struggle clicking and dragging in the layers panel when
there's groups involved. Instead I'm going to go arrange, send backward. There we go.
The final thing I'm going to do is add an extra square which I'll cut out of pretty
dog patterned background paper that I've got just to add a bit of extra color. This time
I'll go for a rounded corner square just so it's a little bit different and let's go maybe 5.25.
And send backwards, send backwards then that's a bit small, 5.5.
This is why I like creating the kind of layout in Design Space because it lets you know how it's all
going to look. So that would be my greetings card all ready to cut. When you go to press make it,
you’ll have your pyramid topper as a print then cut. So you can see all of this and you
know it's a print then cut because you've got these black triangles around the edge of the
paper. These are the guidelines which will be printed so the Cricut can read where it needs
to actually do the cutting. If I press continue I'm not sure it's going to let me do it because my
machine isn't plugged in. Hopefully it will. When you send it to print, there are a few things to
do to get a better quality print. If I press send to printer, it's going to let me do it excellent.
Alright so it'll look like this. You want to make sure add bleed is turned on and that's
going to add an extra bit of color around all the little bits of your pyramid topper
which means if the Cricut cuts it a little bit off, you won't get any white edges from
the paper you'll still see the color. And then press use system dialog on and
that will allow us to access our printer settings to get a higher quality print.
So I’ll press print and then it takes a little while but it should pop up my printer settings.
Here we go. This will look different depending on what kind of printer you have. On my one,
I can go into preferences and then what you're looking for, first is the media type.
I recommend printing on photo paper either gloss or matte and then change your photo paper to
match. I'm using glossy photo paper and then the most important thing is to look for print quality.
It might call it something slightly different, but what you're looking for is a setting in there
to let you change it to high print quality or it might be called best or something like that
and that will mean you get a much better color pop on the paper. And if you're
struggling with printing and you're getting sort of horizontal lines appearing above the print,
it's probably because you're not printing on that high quality setting. So change it to high
and then I'm going to just print that out and then I will follow the on-screen instructions
in Design Space to do the print then cut and then cut out all of the other parts of the card.
If you're not sure how to print and cut with a Cricut Machine check out my class
for the Card Maker Success Summit, following the links in the description of this video,
as I go through the whole process step by step in that. Here's my pyramid sheet printed onto my
glossy photo paper. Just look at that shine and if you don't have a Cricut machine then this is the
point at which you can stop using Design Space. So you can cancel out of the project and close
down Design Space and just don't cut out the other parts of the card. As long as you've printed this
which you can do without a Cricut Machine then you can use a pair of scissors or a craft knife to
cut out all of these bits by hand. But if you do have a Cricut keep following the instructions on
screen to get this cut out and then get the other bits of the card cut out from your cardstock.
Once your pieces are all cut out, you'll then stick them together in size order using foam
squares or foam pads. And I've got these ones here which are the ones I use but any brand will
be fine. I'm not going to share the process of sticking the card together in this video
because that's included in my class for the Card Maker Success Summit which you can find in the
description of this video. But once everything is stuck together, you'll end up with a card
like this. So you can see this follows what I had in Design Space, although I decided not to cut
that card blank shape and instead I used one with these pretty edges that I bought in a craft store.
But everything else is the same so I've got my patterned paper with these rounded corners, my bit
of red card which I stuck at the bottom and then all those pieces of the pyramid, you can see if
I put it on an angle, they're all stuck with those foam squares which gives it that lovely dimension.
And there we go, that's all there is to designing your own pyramid toppers in Cricut Design Space.
If you want to have a go at pyramid toppers without designing your own then you can get this
premade Santa on the rooftops pyramid topper from the Card Maker Success Summit. Again that link is
in the description so this one you don't need to do any of the playing about in Design Space,
it's all done for you so all you need to do is upload and then print then cut
and then I'll show you how to stick it together to get all of that dimension.
I hope you enjoyed this Design Space tutorial on how to design your own pyramage card toppers. If
you did please give the video a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel
for loads more Cricut and card making tutorials. Thank you for watching, bye.