Cricut Design Studio: 7 Things Every Beginner Needs to Know

You finally purchased the  Cricut Design Studio software. Most likely your next question is, "Now what do I do?" Here are seven things you need to know  to jump start your learning of the program.

You can design with all of the cartridges, but you can only cut with the ones you have. Cricut Design Studio has every available cartridge loaded into the program. You can create all kinds of cutting files with any cartridge they offer. While that is fun for experimenting, just remember that when you go to cut the Cricut will ask you to load the specific cartridge used.

You can use more than one cartridge in a cutting. The options are endless. Bring letters and images from any cartridge into the cutting you are designing. When you are ready to cut, the Cricut will ask you to load each cartridge you used.

Connecting letters together to form one cutting is reffered to as welding. In order to weld letters together it is important to remember to check the welding box for each individual letter or image. Another interesting tidbit about welding is that it removes any scorelines on the image.

You can use other people's cut  files. If you are low on creativity or time, your best solution is to use a file designed by someone else. There are Cricut Design Studio users that freely share their designs and ideas. The best starting point would be the Cricut.com message boards. There you will find links you can follow to cut  files all over the web. Simply download the file to your computer and the open it in the Design Studio.

You need to get updates to the Cricut Design Studio at Cricut.com. The updates not only fix any bugs in the program, they also add the latest cartridge releases for you to design  with.

When previewing a cut, if it is welded together, the cutting lines will be in a bold line. If an image previews as a solid color then it is not welded. It is easy to miss checking the welding box on a letter as you are creating, and this is a sure-fire way to make sure that none of them are missing.

You can use several layers when creating a design.  For example, If you are creating a shadow for an image you need to open a new layer just for the shadow. Otherwise, when you go to cut it will cut the image and the shadow at the same time using the same paper. When previewing, the user has the option as to whether or not other layers show through to the one they are working on.