Cricut How To: Knockout Words in Shapes

Knock any name or word out of your shape with this simple Cricut Design Space tutorial. I made kids waterbottles with their names cut out of animal silhouettes… what will you make?

It’s almost back to school time, somehow (seriously, summer went SO QUICK!) and as we’re getting ready, we’re putting names on all the things. The amount of water bottles, tupperware and everything else that our kids lost last year was way too high.

To make it a little bit more fun, I cut their names out of some of their fave animal shapes and am sharing a tutorial on how to do just that using your Cricut and Cricut Design Space (no other software needed).

I’m also sharing some tips on applying adhesive vinyl to curved surfaces like water bottles because it took me a bit of practice.

Have you ever wanted to cut words out of an image? I love the idea of silhouette or even a simple circle for a label but when you lay everything on top of each other in Cricut Design Space, things have a tendency to jump a round a little when you go ‘Make it’.

You could ‘attach’ it all, but then you end up with all the extra cuts when something overlaps on the edge. This tutorial is perfect if you want to be able to make your cut more than once or share your project with another user.

It also gets rid of all those extra cuts outside of your shape if you have your letters fall off the sides (like my designs!).

I created the tutorial with screen shots of the process while making the pencil case designs (a mermaid tail and a dinosaur). You can grab both those finished designs here on Cricut Design Space.

Then, I went ahead and used this tutorial to make my kids labels for their water bottles. The options are really endless with this one, you can cut any words or shapes out of another image. Ready for the tutorial?

Alright, once you’ve opened a new project, go ahead and pick what image you’d like to use for your ‘backdrop’. If you’re into dinosaurs, I really like all the dinosaurs in that ‘Dinosaur Decals’ pack. It’s part of Cricut Access too (bonus!), all the dinos I used are from this cartridge (theme pack).

Once you’ve inserted your image (the dino in this case), then you can add your text to your canvas. Pick any font you like that is a cut font (just make sure it doesn’t only have a ‘writing’ option once you change your text to that font).

I chose ‘A Frightful Affair’ for all of the boys dinosaurs. I used the ‘Crack’ Version on Emmitt’s water bottle but this font is one that I use over and over- it’s so simple but still playful for kids. I used it for these shirts too.

Size your text and drag it over your shape, then under the text options, click ‘Advanced’ and ‘Ungroup to Letters’. This is so that you can resize and position each letter individually.

If you don’t want to do that and want to keep your word all together in a nice line like the mermaid design, you can skip this and go down to the ‘slice’ part of this tutorial.

Once you’ve ungrouped to letters, you’ll see that each letter becomes it’s own text box. You can reposition and resize them individually. I did just that to go with the shape of the dinosaur. I also did that in all three of the water bottle designs.

Once that’s done, it’s time to cut those letters out of your image. You do that with the SLICE tool. But here’s the catch… you can only slice two layers at a time.

You can’t select all those letters and the image and slice it at once if you have ungrouped it… there’s more than two layers. So select just one letter and the image and click ‘Slice’ at the bottom of your right hand panel.

Then delete all the letter parts of your Slice Result and then select the image part of your slice result and another letter and slice again.

Repeat this until all the letters are cut out of your design. I find that it’s easiest to select the one letter and the background without moving things around from the layers panel on the right instead of highlighting on the mat.

Once this is done and all your other ‘slice result’ layers are deleted, you should be left with your image with text cut out!

You can see that in the mermaid design, I haven’t chosen to ‘ungroup to letters’ which makes slicing to create the knockout design really simple as there’s only two layers… or one click!

Then you cut it out and if you’re going to be putting it on water bottles, I highly suggest using an outdoor/permanent vinyl so it is washable.

Alright… now if you’re putting these designs on water bottles and there’s a curved surface, I’d definitely suggest using the ‘hinge method’ to apply the labels.

Basically, you do everything like normal (weed it, apply transfer tape) but instead of peeling back the transfer tape all the way, just peel it off halfway.

Lay down that half of the decal and smooth it, then start peeling the transfer tape back before smoothing out the other half of the design. I found this made SUCH a huge difference in how smooth and wrinkle free the designs went on.

Alright… I’m going to leave it at that! Have you started labelling things for back to school? The Cricut makes it so easy! What about a knockout design like this… have you ever tried it?

Have any tips I haven’t mentioned in this Cricut Design Space Tutorial? Share them in the comments!