Using Canva to Create Christian Focused Designs for the Cricut Maker

I decided to dive in and use my Cricut Maker a bit more after having it for almost a year. Actually… my youngest is off to preschool three afternoons a week and this momma had to physically keep busy. This might just be the trick for me. It has become my creative outlet.

When creating designs I wanted to do something that was meaningful and would create a positive feel – insert Christian inspired apparel. I have been trying to spend more time in His word as well. This helps too! I use The Bible App – YouVersion to dive into different books of the Bible and in return grow my relationship with Jesus. Right now a friend and I are reading James and the app makes it super easy to quick reference different verses and compare versions. The app has helped inspire my designs I create to put on different tops. Anyway… I promise this post isn’t about the Bible app – let’s get into using Canva to create designs for the Cricut Design Space.

Have you used Canva before? If not, I find it to be a pretty user friendly tool for creating images and designs. I use it for all sorts of things – social media images, my website, email letterhead, etc.

First, you’re going to want to head over to Canva and either create an account or log in with a social media/email account. I login with my Facebook account to make things easier on me. Once you have that setup you’re going to want to create a design. At the time of creating this post it was found in the upper right hand corner of Canva. Once you click create a design you can filter to the template you’re looking for. For this, we want to find T-Shirt.

After clicking the T-Shirt design, it’s now time to create your masterpiece. Feel free to use the templates from the left-hand side or get creative and create your own. I do a mix of both depending on my creative mood. You’ll want to be careful with the fonts you select as you’re going to be printing them with HTV or vinyl. Keep that in mind! Below is a simple basic design I recently did.

Once you have your design created you’ll want to download and save it to your computer. These steps can be found in the upper right hand corner of Canva. You can download it as a PNG file.

Once the file is saved on your computer, go ahead and open up Cricut Design Space.

• Start New Project
• Click Upload on the left-hand side of Design Space
• Upload Image

Here is where you are going to want to browse for your image on the computer, select it, and clean it up.

Once it is uploaded you’ll want to select the image type. I tend to use Complex, even though I’m not sure if I need to all of the time. After clicking select on Complex, you need to erase the areas you don’t want. Use the Select & Erase tool. Be sure to go in-between letters such as O, P, R, etc. Then you can click Continue.

Now you can resize your image and get ready to cut it using the Cricut Maker or whichever machine you have. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to assume you know the next steps using the Maker. I wanted to focus on the Canva steps. Please reach out if you do have any questions though. I am no way an expert with Canva or the Maker, but I like to play around with it and learn new things. Below is the final product from the design created in Canva. Doesn’t my niece make a beautiful model? That really isn’t a question, I know she does.

At this point you might be asking, why doesn’t she just use Cricut Design Space. Go for it if it works for you. I just enjoy Canva and find it easier (and cheap… like free).

I couldn’t resist sharing a few more…
And if you want to check them out on my Etsy Shop here you go:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/teampositivevibes?ref=search_shop_redirect

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