Cricut Explore Project: Cutting Cardstock + Free DAD card SVG & DXF File.

Do you like working with Cardstock? Creating cards, Paper flowers, etc.

One of the main reasons I purchased my cutting machines was to cut card, although that took a back seat when I started designing cut files. To help and inspire my fellow Crafter, I have decided to put some projects together for my blog, I thought I should probably start with card stock seeing as that’s where it all started.

I find the Cricut Explore cuts card with ease and accuracy – Just remember to change the dial – which I may have forgotten to do on occasion – maybe even whilst completing this project. Anyway, I digress, here you will find a quick and fun project to complete, or even give you some inspiration for something completely different. (It’s crazy how inspiration works isn’t it?..I love it!)

This is the completed card for this project, you can download the freebie file at the end of this post.

 

To start with I opened the Free DAD SVG file, I designed the SVG file in Adobe Illustrator and uploaded it to Cricut Design Space.

Click here for my guide on ‘how to open an SVG file in Cricut Design Space’

 

Once you have opened the files it should look a little something like this: (the lines running through the middle of the base layer are for the Cricut scoring tool, if you do not have a scoring tool, you can delete these lines and add your own using a scoring board manually, although I do find sometimes it does need that extra bit of manual scoring anyway)

What we need to do first is right click and select ungroup, now this will ungroup everything, so every part of the design will be on it’s own layer, what we need to do now is to attach the parts.
If you take a look at the image below, I have highlighted in pink which parts of the design should be attached to each other. (The highlight is just for the benefit of this post and will not show in Design Space).

You will need to do three lots of attaching. Select the base layer and the scoring lines, (Hold down the shift key and select each part individually, you are best using the layers panel to select rather than the canvas, as for some reason this doesn’t always work when selecting via the canvas), complete the same process for layers 2 and 3.

Now we are almost ready to cut, however we will need to change the lines to score lines rather than cut lines. Click on the scissors icon next to the score lines in the layers panel, and select the score option. As shown below:

I will also suggest that before cutting to change the colours of the layers to similar colours to what your cutting with on your explore. As design Space will think you are cutting with all one colour (You can change the colours by clicking on the scissors icons above)

Now that’s done, you can press the Green Go button at the top of the canvas and prepare your Explore for cutting. I’m using A4 cardstock because I have no 12×12 card, I really should get some I know. So, if like you’re like me and you have a lot of A4 card, you’ll be fine using this in your Explore, you just need to remember to select a different material size when you’re in the cut preview window (this is the window after you’ve pressed go).

Once you are happy with your settings in the cut preview window you can press go, located at the bottom right of the screen.

Follow the instructions on the screen, if you’re cutting just card stock then you will be ok to keep the dial on card stock, if you are cutting a thicker card you may need to choose cardstock +, which is the setting in between cardstock and fabric. If you are also using patterned paper, don’t forget to change the dial to paper when it’s time to switch.

What I find great about cutting with my Cricut is that it tells you when to switch between different colours, which I find really helps me stay organised when cutting.

Now the layers have been through the process of cutting, they now need glueing together (Silly me, I forgot to take a picture of the other 2 layers) What I did was I used the 2nd DAD layer to act as a base for the 3rd DAD layer. I stuck the patterned paper ‘DAD’ to the ‘DAD’ layer that I cut with the same cardstock as the base card layer, this is personal preference and you don’t need to do this, you take this design in whatever direction you want.

I then stuck this to the ‘Base card layer’.  The glue I used to stick the layers was a Tape Pen by Stix to anything

Scroll down for the freebie cut file link shown in this project. Freebie is for Personal Use Only

If you want to purchase the commercial use license for this file and all our other freebies visit our Etsy store

Thank you so much for reading, I hope this project has inspired you to get cutting card with your Cricut. It’s not that scary really. Once you get started there’ll be no stopping you.

Happy Crafting!

Vicky