Crafting Tips - Slice, Weld and Attach Tools in Cricut Design Space

Today I want to show you the tools available in Cricut Design Space. Cricut Design Space is the free online software that you need to use with Cricut machines. You can buy designs from the library, have a look through the free images, use the free basic shapes or you can upload your own designs. I’ve said this before in other blog posts but I love the flexibility of using software to make my own designs and Cricut Design Space is no exception. There are some great tools when uploading your own designs but the canvas screen gives some useful tools to customise and even draw out your designs within the software.

Today we are going to look at some of the tools in the bottom right corner; slice, weld and attach. These tools are greyed out until you have shapes highlighted and therefore something to use the tools on. There are basic shapes in the menu on the left side of the screen. So I’m using these to demonstrate the tools.

Slice

This is a tool I use a lot but still manages to surprise me! You can place two shapes on top of each other, highlight both shapes by left click + dragging the cursor over them.

The slice tool then becomes available to use. When you click it, every line will be sliced. It always surprises me because you can guarantee that I will have forgotten the shape goes behind the front shape and I cut more lines than I realise! This is what the undo button is for! You can see below that the circle has been sliced out of the square so you now have the original circle, sliced circle and the remainder of the square. On the right side of the screen in the layers panel, you can see that each 'slice result' now has it's own layer.

Weld

Welding shapes together is another useful tool. If you want a continuous shape or text joined together so it all gets cut together, this is the tool to use. So here, where I have sliced the circle out of the square, I can weld it back together again to become a square again.

You notice that if you have lined up the circle exactly back into the square, the lines will disappear where it has been welded together. If you are even slightly out, there will still be some of the lines of the circle left. Whatever shapes or part of the shapes are touching, they will fuse together.

Attach

If you have several parts of a design, when you click on the ‘Make It’ button, Cricut Design Space will arrange the parts of the design lined up in whatever order it deems most efficient. If you want to keep a design together so it cuts in a certain way, highlight your design and attach them together. Unlike weld, you can easily detach them if you save and come back to it later. Also, it will still cut out all the lines, it will just keep the design positioned where you want it. Here’s an example of the First Day Chalkboards that I make.

It's a design with many layers and different image and text elements. If I were to cut it without attaching all the layers together, it would cut out on the mat like this.

By attaching the layers together (click and drag over all of the design on the canvas + click attach), your Cricut will cut them like this.

I hope you have found these tips useful and I would love to know if there are any Cricut or crafting tips you would like to see on this blog in the future. Please comment below!