How to create an offset and shadow in Cricut Design Space

Cricut Design Space has a lot of features that make designing easy but shadow and offset are not some of them.  In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create an offset and a shadow in Cricut Design Space. This method can be done both in the app and the desktop version of Design Space.  You’ll just need a free Smartphone app called Phonto to do it.

First things first

In order to create the offset and shadow in Cricut Design Space you’ll first have to make them in Phonto.  The video below shows all the steps in detail but here’s a quick rundown:

1. Open Phonto and click the camera at the bottom
2. Select “Plain Image” and then click the white square in the top right corner
3. Click the “upload” icon and then select “Use”
4. Tap the screen to pull up the text box and enter your text

Moving on to the fun stuff

Now it’s time to choose your font and add the offset and shadow. Phonto has tons of fonts to choose from but you can also download your own fonts into Phonto.  The video above shows you how to do it and here’s a link to CreativeFabrica for free fonts with a subscription.  To add the offset follow the steps below:

1. Tap “style” and the word text should have a grey box. You’re now working in the text editor.  You can change the color of your text by scrolling across the color bar.
2. Tap the word “Stroke” and it will be highlighted.  You are now working in the stroke editor. Change the color of your stroke so you can see it and then go down to “width” and drag the bar up to get the offset you want.
3. Tap the “Style” button at the top (this may look different on an Android phone but the menu names are all the same). From here you can select your shadow.  You’ll either want a drop shadow or a side shadow (see pic below).
4. Select your shadow and position it however you’d like by dragging the “X” and “Y” handles to move it up and down and right to left.

Saving your work

You need to save each layer individually to import into design space.  Start with your shadow layer and follow the steps below:

1. Leave your shadow layer as is and tap back into “Color” at the top of your screen. Change the color of your stroke to white and the color of your text to white.  You should only see your shadow now.
2. Click “Done” and make sure your word is fully visible on the screen. Click the “Upload” icon and save the image to your phone.
3. Next save your offset layer by turning the shadow layer and text layer white and choosing a new color for the offset so you can see it.  Follow the steps above to save your offset layer.
4. Now you’ll save your text layer by turning the offset white and the text to a different color so you can see it.  Again, follow the steps above to save the image to your phone.

Moving over to Design Space

Now it’s time to move your text, offset and shadow in Cricut Design Space. You should have saved 3 photos to your phone.  You can either upload them to Design Space by using the Design Space App or by uploading them to your computer and then into the desktop version of Design Space.  Watch the video above to see how to work with the 3 separate layers.  It’s pretty easy.  Just import each layer into your project and then align them to fit together. Then you’re ready to cut out your new design.

 

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