Off The Edge Thank You Card

Thank you for joining me for the Cricut Card Making Summit! Weather you are a brand new card maker, or have been created cards for years, this event is sure to inspire you! Over the years I have made a lot of different styles of birthday and thank you cards. The great thing about cards is they can be simple but still be beautiful!

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Designing your Off The Edge Thank You Card

This style of card is called an off the edge or shaped edge card. Basically instead of having a straight edge the edge of this card will be shaped to look like part of the design is going off the edge. You can follow along with me and create this card in Cricut Design Space, or you can use one of my three thank you card SVG files for a quick and easy option.

If you would like to make your thank you card exactly like I will be demonstrating, you will need to download and install the font Elephant from FontsGeek.com. Please look up how to install a font for the specific device you are using, as the directions will differ slightly. In Cricut Design Space, your installed fonts will be under the Systems tab. If you do not see your installed fonts there, you might have to restart your Design Space software.

You can create this thank you card from your Cricut Design Space mobile app, but the directions I will be detailing out in this tutorial will be on the computer version of Design Space.

The first step in making this thank you card is to insert a square from the Shapes button on the left hand side of the screen. I am going to go to the top of the screen and change the color to white. Next, I will go to the Size section of the top panel and click the padlock icon. This will unlock the square so that I can stretch it into a rectangle. The measurements for the rectangle will be 5 1/2 inches wide and 8 1/2 inches high. This will be the base of your thank you card.

Next I am going to click on the Images button so that I can search for an image to use. You can use any image, but for this project I am going to show you how to find a free image. That way if you do want to make this project you will not have to purchase anything from Cricut Design Space.

Cricut groups their images in different categories. The first grouping you will notice is the Highlighted Categories. Within that list you will see a listing that says Free. Click on that and you will be able to see just the free images in Cricut Design Space. There are over 3,000 free images for you to choose from!

I decided to use a basic silhouette of a butterfly, and the image I used is image #M7865ED0. You can type this number into the search bar in the images screen if you would like to use the same image I am using. Once you click on the image you will see a green outline around the image preview. This is how you know that you have it selected. You can now click the green Add to Canvas button in the lower right corner of the screen.

There are not exact measurements or numbers to follow for this next part of the thank you card. Just do what looks good to you! That way each person who creates this card will have something totally unique! First I am going to take that butterfly and rotate him slightly to the left. To rotate I am going to hover my mouse over the square in any one of the corners of the image until I see a double arrow. I am also going to go to the Operations function on the top panel and change the color of the butterfly.

Now I am going to right click on the butterfly and select duplicate. Duplicate is like doing a copy and paste all in one move. You can also duplicate with the Duplicate button found at the top of the Layers panel on the right of the screen. Take the butterfly that you duplicated and make it just slightly smaller than the first butterfly. Then rotate it to the right so it looks like it is flying in a different location. If you would like to, you can change the color of this butterfly.

Now we can duplicate that second butterfly and move it to the left of the original butterfly. I am going to make this one just slightly smaller just to add some variation and interest to the entire thank you card design.

Once you have your three butterflies arranged, positioned and sized like you want them, you are going to select all three of them at the same time. To do this, you can either make a large selection window around all of them, or you can click on each one while holding down the shift key on your keyboard. You can also select the different images from the layers panel, and hold down the shift key on your keyboard to select more than one image.

On the top panel, click on the Offset button. I am going to use a 1/4 inch offset on my design. You will see a blue preview of how your offset will look before you hit the apply button. I am also going to make sure that the Weld Offsets button is checked so that I am just creating one large shape behind all three butterflies, instead of three separate offsets.

Once you click apply you will see the Offset shape. I am going to go back up to the Operations function and change the color of this offset to white. Next I want to selection all three butterflies and the offset and click the Group button. Group holds all of these pieces together so that I can resize them and not lose the placement and spacing of my design.

Once you have all of those pieces grouped, go up to the top panel and look at the Size area. Make sure that your padlock icon is locked, because you want the Design Space software to figure out the math for you in this next step. Change the width of the entire grouping to be 5 1/2 inches wide, and hit enter. You do not have to enter anything into the height dimension since the software figured out that dimension for you. That is the beauty of having that little padlock icon locked!

Now it is time to add that shaped edge to our thank you card! Select the butterfly grouping and the card base that you have already created, then go to the top panel and select the Align button. First we are going to Align to the bottom, so that the bottom edges of everything line up. Then we are going to select Align again, but this time choose Algin then Center Horizontally. Now your butterfly grouping is exactly where you want it!

Next we need to ungroup the butterfly from the offset behind it so that we can work with the offset and the base of the thank you card. To do that, just click on the same button that you used to Group them together. If you would like to turn off the butterfly layers to help you with the next part you can do that by clicking on the eyeball icons for each one in the layers panel.

Select just the thank you card base rectangle and the offset piece, then go to the lower right corner of the screen and click Slice. Slice is used to cut one object from another, so it will cut the offset from the card base.

To remove the pieces that we no longer want to be a part of the edge of this card, click on the card base piece and in the lower right corner of the screen select Contour. Contour allows us to hide, or turn off portions of a design. This is a great way to edit an existing design!

You will notice that a new window opens up, which allows you to look at each piece or section of this cut. When you click on a piece, that will turn it off or hide it. Click on the lower portion of your design, which is what is what we want to remove to make the shaped edge. Once you have that turned off, you can close out of the Contour window.

Now you will notice that your two pieces of the partial base card and the offset are right next to each other, but not connected. We want to make those one big piece. Select both of these pieces and in the lower right corner of the screen click on Combine, then under Combine choose Weld. Weld joins anything that is touching or overlapping into one piece.

You can turn your butterflies back on now if you had turned them off. To do that just click on the eyeball icons again from the layers panel. If your butterflies are not visible right away it could be that the software forced the new card base to the front of the screen so just click on that base and from the top panel choose Arrange and then pick Send to Back.

After all of that you would think we would be done, but we are not. We need to add a score line to this thank you card. Select everything and click on the Group button so that we do not move anything out of position with this next step. Then go to the Shapes button and insert a score line. It is the first item under the Shapes button.

Click on the score line and change height of it to 5 1/2 inches and the rotation of it to 90 degrees. Now you can select the grouping of the entire card and the score line and use the Align button at the top to choose Align Center. This will perfectly center your score line on your thank you card.

There is a step that I feel a lot of people forget when they are making cards with their Cricut. You need to Attach the score line to the card base. If you do not do this step, when you click Make It the Cricut will not know where you want that score line and it will put it on a separate cutting mat.

Important Tip: Attach will not work while we have everything grouped, so you will first have to Ungroup the card.

After you have ungrouped, select just the thank you card base and the score line, and in the lower right corner of the screen select the Attach button. The icon for Attach looks like a little paperclip. Attach holds the placement and position of things.

Last but not least, we can add the words Thank You to our card. Click on the text button and when you see the word TEXT show up on your screen just start typing. There is no need to click on anything on the screen.

If you want the word you to be under the word thank in your design, just click the enter button on your keyboard after you type the word thank. After you have the words typed up, click on the text and go to the Fonts pull down on the top panel. If you would like to use the same font that I used, click on Systems and scroll down until you see Elephant and choose that. The other way to find it would be to type Elephant into the search bar.

You can make further adjustments to your text at this point. On the upper panel, you will see an Alignment button. I used that to make sure my text was perfectly centered on top of each other. I also used the Line Spacing button to move the word you up closer to the word thank. Now you can resize and place the words thank you where you want them on the card, just above the butterflies. I would click the Save button at this time.

Cutting your Off The Edge Thank You Card

Now it is time to click Make It and let the Cricut do it’s magic! When you click Make It you will see the mat previews on the left hand side of the screen. Just look at those to know which color of cardstock the Cricut wants to cut first. Once you are ready to cut your thank you card you can click the Continue button in the lower right corner of the screen.

The Design Space software with connect to your Cricut machine. For this project you can set your material to Cardstock or if you are using some thick cardstock you can go to Cardstock + just to make sure you get a nice cut all the way through. Place your cardstock on the cutting mat and load it into the machine, making sure that the mat is under the guides on the machine. Once the mat is loaded the C button on the Cricut will blink and you can click on that to begin the cutting process.

When you get to the color of cardstock that you are cutting your main thank you card base out of, the Cricut will first score the score line and then it will move on to cutting the base. Do not unload the cutting mat between these two steps as your score line and base might not line up.

Assemble your Off The Edge Thank You Card

After everything is cut and you have removed the pieces from the mat it is time to assemble your card. Fold the card base on the score line, then using adhesive apply glue to the back of each butterfly and place them on the card front. I like to place the center butterfly first to help me with the spacing. Last, add adhesive to the back of the words thank you and place those on the card front.

If you enjoyed this card making tutorial, I encourage you to check out some of the other cards I have made HERE. I love to help people learn to use their Cricut, so if you feel like you want to learn more make sure to check out my additional Teach Me Cricut Design Space resources below.

Teach Me Cricut Design Space Handbooks

If you enjoyed this project and want to learn more about how to use Cricut Design Space, make sure that you download my free handbooks and resources HERE. These handbooks are a great introduction to learning to use Design Space. If you feel like you want a more in depth all inclusive course on the ins and outs of Cricut Design Space I also offer a full course that you can purchase HERE.

I started my Cricut journey as a scrapbooker and card maker, but once I really started to understand what the features and functions of Design Space could do I was able to unlock my creativity and really start to make some amazing projects!