Last week I added a little bit of leopard to one of my classic and totally geeky SVG files… Pumpkin Pi! Today I’m sharing with you how you can leopard pretty much any design you want to cut and use with your Cricut. (within reason :)

Ever wonder how you can take patterns you find online and use them in your Cricut projects? Today I’m going to share with you EVERYTHING you need to know about using patterns in Cricut Design Space. And if I don’t cover a question you have? Hit up the comments and I’ll add that info to this post!

Using Cricut Patterns as a Fill to Print and Cut:

Have the shape you’d like to fill to print in a new Cricut Design Space file.

In the tool bar on the left hand side of Design Space, click “Upload”. On the Next screen click the button for “Upload Pattern”.

Upload a JPG, GIF, PNG, or BMP image file. SVG files will not work for Pattern Fills.

Name your pattern and select the colors in the file. Click “Save”.

Back in the Design Space work area select your shape to fill. In the tool bar at the top of the screen select “Fill”. In the drop-down menu select “Print”.

Click the square to the right of the Fill drop-down you just accessed. Scroll to find the pattern and click to select.

The pattern may need a little work to look good. Notice where the pattern repeats on the right side of the heart?

To fix this click the square to the right of the Fill drop-down box. Click “Edit Pattern”.

In the Edit Pattern window you can change the scale of the design. I’ve increased the scale to 232 so that I have bigger leopard spots. You can also move the pattern around by entering positive and negative numbers in the “Horizontal” and “Vertical” fields. Rotation is possible by entering a degree. Flip the design horizontally or vertically by clicking one of these buttons on this screen.

How to Cut Out Cricut Patterns:

When using a Cricut pattern that has multiple layers/colors it can quickly get confusing about what to do next. Neatly arranging your layers will help you keep track of what step is next…

Arranging your elements to cut out your pattern without confusion.

Create the shape you’d like to fill with your cut out Cricut pattern. Count the number of colors in your Cricut pattern you will be using. Our leopard spots pattern has the gold background, the brown splotches, and black for a total of 3 colors.

Right click your image and select “Duplicate”. Repeat so that you have 1 shape for each color in your pattern.

Select all of the shapes. In the tool bar at the top of Design Space click “Align”. In the drop-down-menu select “Center”.

Click the “Upload” button on the left side tool bar in Cricut Design Space. Select your SVG file and click “Insert Image”.

In the layers on the right-hand side of Design Space select your background. Right click and select “Ungroup.”

Select the background layers and right click. Select “Send to Back”.

Repeat until all of the layers are beneath your shapes to fill in the layer’s list. In the Layers list on the right hand side of the screen, you should see your pattern elements below the shapes.

How to Make Your Pattern to be Cut:

For solid layers, select the top-most shape in Design Space. In the tool bar at the top there is a drop-down for “Linetype”. Next to this drop down is a square. Click that square. In the menu that comes up, select the color of your bottom-most layer.

Right-click the solid layer from the pattern files in the Layers list at the right of the screen. Click “Delete” to remove this layer.

Select your newly colored top-most shape and right-click. Select “Send to Back”.

How to cut away the pattern outside of your chosen shape:

To remove all of the pattern that is not within the shape we are cutting we will use the “Slice” tool. This tool can only be used with 2 layers at a time. We are going to change the visibility of the layers other than the 2 we are going to work with to make things less confusing…

In the Layers list to the right of the screen click the EYE icons of all but 1 of your shapes to cut and 1 of your background layers. You should have only 2 layers visible in your workspace. Layers that are not visible will have a slash through the eye icon.

Use your cursor to select all of the elements in the workspace. On the right side of the screen at the bottom of the layers list click the button for “Slice”. If this button is grayed out and not clickable, you more than likely have more than 2 layers selected.

You will now have several new layers in your list that say “Slice Result”.

Right-click all of the unnecessary slice result layers by right clicking them in the Layers List and selecting “Delete”.

Repeat the Process for All Layers of the Pattern:

Click the EYE icon next to the “Slice Results” layer you kept to make it invisible. Make the next pair of layers (1 shape layer and 1 pattern layer) the only things visible in your workspace clicking the EYE icons as needed. Repeat the process to slice away the excess… Select all of the elements in the workspace (or click the “Control button on your keyboard at the some time you hit the “A” button to SELECT ALL”). Click the “Slice” tool in the options below the Layer List. Delete all of the unnecessary “Slice Layers”.

If necessary, drag your layers in the order they will be laid down on your project to ensure the design looks right. Your file is ready to cut!

Cutting a Cricut Pattern from another SVG File:

You don’t have to cut out your patterns from shapes already in Cricut Design Space, you can also cut patterns out of SVG files you download or create yourself.

Upload both your background and SVG files and insert the images into Design Space.

Repeat the process, just as you would for a Cricut Shape. It’s no different at all and opens up a ton of possibilities for your cuts!

This is a lot to remember! Be sure to pin this post to reference later!