Updated Knockout tutorial for Cricut Design Space

In this updated knockout tutorial I’ll show you how to make a knockout in the new updated Cricut Design Space. Cricut made some updates a few months ago and some things are moved around and work a little differently. I just wanted to take a quick minute and show you where everything is now.

Step 1

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To start off the updated knockout tutorial you’ll need to open a new project in Cricut Design Space. Add the text for your main word. In my example the main word is “MOM”. Make sure you’re using a clear and basic font. I used Cake Basics font (free with Cricut Access). You’ll also need to make sure your word is in all caps.

Step 2

Add the text you want in the middle of your main word. In my example I used the names of the children. You can use any font you’d like for this part. I used the Marisha Font I downloaded from Creative Fabrica. 

Important note about fonts: If you plan on selling any of the item you make you MUST make sure you have a commercial license for the fonts you use. Almost all of the fonts you download from free sites like dafont.com are for personal use only! This can get you into a ton of copyright and trademark trouble. Be safe and pay for your fonts. The designers spend a lot of time creating the beautiful fonts we love and they deserve to be paid for their work, especially if you want to be paid for the product you’re making using their font. Creative Fabrica has several free fonts that include a commercial license or you subscribe to their font membership and get unlimited font downloads that include the commercial license. They have thousands of fonts to choose from.

Step 3

Play around with the spacing and position of your words until you get them just the way you want them and then weld the words together.  Once they are perfect and welded, set them to print rather than cut.

Step 4

Click the “Make It” button as if you were going to make the project. You ARE NOT actually going to make this yet. Once your project is up on the mat you’ll see the “print” mat first. Go ahead and select “send to printer”. Again, you ARE NOT actually going to make this. Don’t worry; it won’t go to your printer. You may need to have a printer connected to your computer for this to work but I promise you won’t need to use the printer at all.

Step 5

Once you have hit “send to printer” you’ll get a confirmation screen. Make sure the “bleed” option is TURNED ON! This will make an offset for your words giving them a little extra girth. This is exactly what you want for a knockout. From here, right-click on the words and select “save image as”. Name your image and select a folder to save it to. (I named mine blob and saved it to my desktop.) Then you can exit out of the print and cancel the cut.

Step 6

Once you have canceled the cut and you’re back in your project you’ll want to pull in the image you just saved. Click the “Upload” button and select “upload image”. Find your blob image and upload it into design space. You’ll select “simple image” and then delete everything in the image except the blob of words. (Just keep clicking the lines of the box until they all disappear or use the eraser tool.)  Save this as a “cut image” and insert it into your project.

Step 7

Now it’s time for some positioning. I like to make each layer a different color so it’s easy to see what I’m working with.  I turn the main word black, the blob text pink and the actual text blue. Size the main word to the size you want it on your final project. Pull your blob text up to the middle of your main word and position it exactly how you want it to look on your final project. Then pull in the actual text and position it in the middle of the blob text. Continue to resize and position the blob text until you get it perfectly aligned behind your actual text.

Step 8

Pull your actual text out leaving only your main word and the blob text together. Select both the main word and the blob text and hit “slice”.  This will cut the blob out of the main text.  Go to the layers panel and delete all of the blob text including the part remaining in the middle of the main word. Once it is all removed you should see a gap between the top and the bottom of your main word.

Step 9

Move your actual text back up into the gap in your main word and position it to the exact position you want.  Set the actual text back to cut and you’re ready to cut your project. If you plan on making the whole project one color, weld it all together. If you’re making it 2 separate colors, keep it as is.

That’s all there is to it for this updated knockout tutorial. Make sure to watch the video below for the full tutorial.