I hope you are enjoying all of the Disney Christmas crafts and tutorials that I have put together. This week I am focused on Disney Character Christmas ornaments, and today’s is inspired by Lilo and her red dress. I am going to use the same basic ornament shape that I shared with you earlier this week. Click HERE to go to that post and then come back here to see how I added elements to make the ornament look like Lilo.
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Disney Character Christmas Ornaments – Step by Step
Once you have the basic Christmas ornament SVG uploaded into Design Space, click on the image and adjust the size. I decided to make mine 5″ in height. You can either drag the double arrow in the lower right corner of the image to resize, or enter the exact height you want in the Size area on the top panel. I circled the size area in blue at the top of this image for you to make it easy for you to find.
When you click on the image, you will notice that all of the pieces of the Christmas ornament will resize together. This is because I have grouped them together. Since I am going to want to alter the white piece, I am going to click the Ungroup button in the upper right corner, indicated with the blue arrow in the image below. Ungrouping the layers will allow me to more easily work with just the white layer.
Upload Dress Pattern for Lilo
Head to Google or your favorite search engine and search for Lilo’s dress pattern. Once you type that in, click on the images section of the search results.
Find an image with a good all over pattern. Do not use anything where it is zoomed in to just a few of the leaves. You also want to make sure to not use a picture of an actual dress or fabric, since when you upload an image like that to Design Space it will try and show all of the fibers in the grain of the material.
Once you find an image you like, save that to your computer. For my computer I can just right click on the image and there is a choice to save the image to my computer. If you have never done this before do a search for how to download images to the device you are working with. For using the iPad for this process you can use my video HERE.
In Design Space click on the Upload button, which I have indicated with a blue arrow in the image below. When you do that, it will take you to a new screen.
This next screen is where you will tell Design Space that you want to upload an Image. Click on the Upload Image button and a new screen will come up, which will have another button right in the center of the screen for you to click on. When you click on that button you will go to the location on your computer where you saved the image file of Lilo’s dress pattern.
Now you will be in the area where you start the process for what is called cleaning up an image. This is where you tell the Cricut which parts of the design you want it to actually cut. On the right half of this screen you will see three choices. Since there are really fine lines in the center of those leaves that I want the Cricut to pick up, I am going to choose the Complex option, which I have indicated with a blue arrow in the center of this picture. Now you can click the Continue button in the lower right corner of the screen.
REALLY IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT THIS SCREEN
I know that this heading is a little dramatic, but I really want you to pay attention to this screen. This is where the magic really happens on projects where you upload images.
If you have the newest updated version of Design Space then the Advanced option I show here is actually now under More Options further down on the left hand side of the screen. Because of that change in the look of the left side panel I created this NEW video about upload and using this more advanced option HERE.
If you still have the older version of Design Space, then your options will look like what I show below. The process is the same, it is just that where to find this more advanced way to reduce the colors that Design Space is looking for has moved slightly.
On the left hand side, there is an Advanced Options button, which I am pointing to with the blue arrow. Click on that and this gives you some options to reduce the colors in the design. Images are made up of tiny pixels, so even though this is a red and white image, if we were to zoom way in and break it down to pixels there would be some shades of different reds in there. The Advanced Options button allows you to tell the Cricut to look for fewer colors. Since Lilo’s dress is just 2 colors, I change that top number to 2.
Next, click on the magic wand symbol that I have circled in purple in the image above. When you use the magic wand it will remove entire areas of a design that are the same color with one click. Start clicking on the white areas of the design. To help you see where to click I marked a few purple stars on the image above.
As you click on the white areas of Lilo’s dress pattern, you will see that they change to a checkboard pattern. In the world of image design, this indicates that this area is now transparent, so it is like that area is not even there. When you think you are done getting all of the white areas, click on the Preview button at the bottom of the screen right in the center. If you are happy with the results you can click the green Continue button in the lower right corner.
Cut or Print then Cut
In this next screen the Cricut is asking you if you want to save this image as a Cut image or a Print then Cut image. If you do not understand the difference, I actually did a whole blog post and video specifically on that subject that you can check out HERE. For this project I know I want to cut red cardstock so I will click on the Cut Image choice, which I have circled in the image below. Now you can click on the green button in the lower right corner to go to the next screen.
Now you can see the cut file for Lilo’s dress pattern in your Uploaded Images section! This is different from making a svg file, so please do not confuse the two things. You cannot make a true svg file in Design Space. I talk about the topic of SVG files more in a blog post HERE.
Click on the uploaded image, and then click on the green button in the lower right corner of Design Space. I have indicated both with blue arrows for you below.
Using Slice in Cricut Design Space
Once you insert the image of Lilo’s dress into Design Space, click on the color button and change the color of it to red.
Now I want to make a second copy of the white portion of our Christmas ornament. This is because I want one that will be a solid white and one that will have the red portion of Lilo’s dress design on it. To do this, I right click on the white ornament piece and choose Duplicate. Duplicate is like doing a copy and paste all in one move. The other way to duplicate something is to click on the Duplicate button in the upper right corner of the screen in Design Space.
You can move one of the white ornament pieces back on top of the black piece, and place the red patterned piece over the top of the second white shape. You can hardly see the white piece under the red in the image below, but if you look hard I think you can see it poking through some of the leaves.
With just the red pattern and the white ornament under it selected, click the Slice button in the lower right corner of Design Space. I have it indicated with a blue arrow for you in the image below. This will cut the ornament outline out of the center of the red patterned piece. Remember, Slice will only work when you have two items selected.
After you Slice you can start to pull all of the layers you made apart. See how there is one that is a perfect ornament shape of Lilo’s dress! Move that over on top of the ornament piece, and then you can delete the other two pieces that I have marked with a big X in orange in the image below.
Now you just have to click Make it in Cricut Design Space and the Cricut will tell you which color of material to put on the cutting mat first.
Disney Character Christmas Ornaments Video – Lilo
If you would like to see a video of all of the steps above I have that for you also! You can also head over to my YouTube channel!
Assemble Lilo’s Disney Character Christmas Ornament
After you have cut all of the different colors for this project, the last step is to assemble the pieces. For this I am going to use my tape runner that is loaded with double sticky tape and my Zig glue pen.
First I used the tape runner to apply tape to the back of the white ornament shape and the apply that to the black piece. Next I used my Zig glue pen to precisely place glue where I wanted to stick the gray topper for the ornament. I love how this glue pen allows me to put a fine line of glue down right where I want it. Then I just set the gray cardstock piece on top of the glue.
Paper Crafting Tip!
Here is a general paper crafting tip for you. Look at the red piece I cut out for Lilo’s dress pattern. See how the edges of it are slightly white? That is because I used a white core cardstock so the color does not go all the way through. To make this look cleaner, I took a red marker and just ran that around the white edge of this piece. I think it gives it a more professional look.
After you have inked the edges of Lilo’s dress pattern with a marker, you can apply the tape with the tape runner to the back and place the red piece down. But what about the little lines in the center of the leaves? Don’t worry! I did not forget about them.
Because those little lines would have been too tiny to try and glue into the ornament I decided to grab one of the pieces that the Cricut had cut away from the red cardstock. I placed that red leaf piece inside of each leaf cut out like a puzzle piece and use red ink and dabbed it over the center opening of the leaf.
It was basically like I was using the leaf as a stencil to add the lines back into Lilo’s dress pattern! I used a cotton swab for this along with an ink pad. I just tapped the cotton swab onto the ink pad, and then dabbed on the center opening in the leaf piece. I recommend dabbing instead of rubbing since you do not want the leaf to move around.
Once I was done I think this really turned out to be a great Christmas ornament that represented Lilo.
I hope that you enjoyed this post, and that you stop back every day from now until Christmas to see what other Disney Christmas crafts I have planned for you! I am doing 25 Days of Disney Christmas Crafts to inspire you to add more Disney to your life while using your Cricut for crafting. If you want to see the whole line up of crafts you can go HERE.
