If you still feel like a beginner with Cricut Design Space, let me show you a function that helped me to start to do so much more with the projects I was designing. Today we are going to talk about the using Contour in Cricut Design Space.
Contour is a great way to turn on and off different pieces and parts of an image. This can open up the way you use some images. For example, if you have an image like this one, that is just a black and white image or coloring book style image . . . . like this one that is available on Storenvy
You could just cut that black outline, like I did for this project. For this specific example I cut it out of black iron on vinyl that was ironed onto a shirt.
Creating Layers
But what if I wanted to use this same image, and add color to the balloons and use it on a card or scrapbook layout? Did you know that you can use the Contour function to create the colored layers for a project like this?
To start off, bring the black outline image into Cricut Design Space. Adjust it to be the size you want your completed image to be. Next, duplicate the image. Click on the duplicated image and go to the lower right corner of Design Space and click on Contour. This shows you each individual cut in this image. You can now click on the different cuts to hide them or turn the off, thus changing the contour of the image.
If these directions do not make sense, watch this little video to see it all come together.
Now you just have to do this over and over again for each color you want on this image. Keep going until you have something that looks like this . . .
One I have all of the colors layered on top of each other, I like to turn the entire background cut to black, so that you get one full cut to layer all of the colors on top of.
Other examples of using Contour
If you would like to see other examples of times I have used Contour you can check out the following posts
Creating Layers
Halloween Face Mask
I hope this helped you to learn to use the contour feature in Cricut Design Space. There is so much you can do once you learn some of the features Cricut Design Space has to offer.
If you found this helpful, you should join my Teach Me Cricut Design Space Facebook Group. You can ask me questions and I will share all of my best tips and tricks with you. Or if you want a more personal experience, you can join my Patreon group.
I also have a lot of great resources on my Classes page of this website including my Teach Me Cricut Design Space Online Course. In this course I take you step by step through how to use every button and function in Design Space. I have compiled the most frequently asked Cricut questions along with the answers to those questions into one online course. This is my most in depth and detailed Cricut resource ever! It contains over two years worth of Cricut knowledge and research in one course!
What to know a secret?
Guess what? I was once in your shoes! I was once a Cricut beginner! You can actually look way back on this blog and find my early posts and see how far I have come on my journey!
You can also see that I love helping people. I think we should spend more time having fun crafting than trying to figure out how to use a software program! This is why I break everything I know into easy to follow steps. And because I have written down the steps, added screen shots and videos, you will know that you have the best resources for learning.
I also use a lot of analogies in my tutorials. If I can relate something in the Cricut Design Space software to an every day situation or something most people would encounter in every day life, I feel that helps people to learn. One great example of this is how I compare Cricut Access to Netflix.
So if you feel like you are always struggling with Cricut Design Space and wish there was one place you could go to learn how to use all of the buttons and features so you could spend your time just enjoying crafting then you should check out my Teach Me Cricut Design Space Online Course. This course is like having a direct line to my brain and downloading all of the information I know about using Cricut Design Space!
6 Responses
Thank you! This was very helpful!!
You are welcome! I love it when I can help someone to learn something new for their projects.
Such a nice and ideal blog. We'll try this at home. Congrats
Thank you,very informative. I'm going to have to practice with technique.
Thank you!!
To log in to Cricut Design Space go to the Cricut website and download the program.