If you would rather watch before you read, this short lesson from our free Cricut Foundation Series covers exactly what we are about to do: finding your file, unzipping it, and getting it into Design Space without the guesswork.

Click here to watch the complete
Cricut Maker Foundation Series

Step 1: Make a Folder First

This takes ten seconds and saves you a great deal of hunting later.

On your desktop, right-click and choose New Folder. Name it something you will recognize. Meagan names hers Project Files.

Every cut file you download from us can live here. When you go looking for a file six months from now, you will be glad it has a home.

Step 2: Download the SVG File

Go to the project you would like to cut. Find the download button and click it. That brings you down the page to all of the project downloads.

From here, you have two choices. Download All gives you all files for the project in a single zipped folder. Cutting Machine Template provides only the SVG cut file, which is the one your machine uses.

A window opens asking where to save. Navigate to the folder you made in Step 1, double-click it, and click Save. You can rename the file here if you like.

What lands in your folder is a compressed folder, also called a zip file. Inside it is the actual cut file. This is normal. Most cut file sites work this way, because a zip lets us hand you several files in one click.

Note: if you skip the folder step, most computers save to the Downloads folder.

Step 3: Unzip the Folder

This is the step that trips up the most crafters, so take your time here.

Design Space cannot read a file that is still inside a zip folder. If you try, you get an error saying the file is not supported. Nine times out of ten, that error means the folder was never unzipped.

On a Mac

Double-click the zip folder. It expands in the same place, and the new file appears right beside the original. Look for the file ending in .svg.

On Windows

Right-click the zip folder and choose Extract All. It will offer to unzip to the same location, or you can click Browse to pick a different location. Check the box for Show extracted files when complete, then click Extract.

On iPad or iPhone

Open the Files app and find your download. Tap the zip folder once. iOS expands it into a folder beside the original. Open it to find the .svg file.

On Android

Open the Files app, find the zip, and tap Extract.

Once it has unzipped, select the zip folder and move it to the trash. You do not need it anymore, and keeping it around is how crafters end up uploading the wrong one.

Before you move on, confirm you are looking at a file that ends in .svg. Not .zip. Not .png. The extension matters.

Step 4: Upload the File into Design Space

Open Design Space and click New Project in the upper right corner. Click Blank Canvas, then Start Designing.

  1. Click Upload in the left panel.
  2. Click Upload Image.
  3. Click Browse to find your unzipped .svg file. Select the project folder you created, then the file you would like to cut.
  4. Design Space shows you a preview. Because SVG files already contain cut paths, there is nothing to trace and no background to remove. If Design Space asks you to clean up the image, you selected a PNG or JPEG by mistake. Go back and pick the .svg.
  5. If the preview looks correct, click Continue.
  6. Click Upload in the bottom right corner.

Your file is now on your canvas.

Design Space accepts one SVG at a time. If a project has several files, repeat the upload for each one.

Step 5: Get Your Canvas in Order

Two small housekeeping moves make everything after this clearer.

Close the sidebar that pops out on the left. Click the little arrow to tuck it away and give yourself room. Then zoom out until you can see everything on the canvas at once.

Do not resize the design. Our files are already scaled to match the project photos. A peony petal cut at 80 percent will not assemble into the flower you saw. Resize only when you want a deliberately larger or smaller version.

Now look at the layers panel on the right. Everything arrived grouped. Click the little arrow next to the Group button to expand it and see all your groups.

You are not ungrouping here. You are opening the list to see what you are working with.

Step 6: Hide the Designer Notes Layer

Every file from our site includes a layer of designer notes at the top of the panel. It holds the copyright line, and often the details that make a project work: which direction the crepe paper grain should run, which blade to load, which material setting we used.

Read it. Then hide it.

Click the eye icon next to that layer in the layers panel to turn it off.

This one matters more than it sounds. Those notes sit outside the cut area, so Design Space measures them as part of the design. If you have ever seen the message that a file is too large for your mat, the notes layer is almost always why. Hide it, and the size problem disappears.

Step 7: Attach Each Color Group

This is the most important step in the whole process, and it is the one crafters skip.

We group every file by color and deliberately arrange the pieces to use as little crepe paper as possible. That arrangement is doing real work for you. Attaching is how you keep it.

  1. Go to the Layers panel and select one color group. A green box appears around it on the canvas.
  2. Click the little paper clip at the bottom that says Attach.
  3. Repeat for every color group in the file.

Do not skip any of them.

Here is what happens if you do. Design Space rearranges the pieces on its own. Your layout can stretch past the 10-inch mark, which is the height of a roll of our crepe paper, and pieces end up hanging off the edge of your material. You also use far more crepe than the project needs. And Design Space may rotate pieces, which breaks the grain line direction the designer notes just told you about.

Attaching prevents all of it.

One more thing: do not rotate anything yourself. The pieces are positioned the way they are on purpose, for the grain.

If you need to undo it later, select the set and click Detach.

If Your Project Has Score Lines

Score lines are the solid lines in a file that tell your machine to crease rather than cut. They give you clean folds on boxes, cards, and folded petals.

Design Space cannot tell on its own that a line in an uploaded file is meant to be scored. You set that yourself.

  1. Click the layer you want to score. It turns dark in the layers panel.
  2. Go to the Operation dropdown in the edit bar along the top of the screen. It will currently read Basic Cut.
  3. Choose Score.

The line turns dashed on your canvas, and the layers panel updates to read Score. Repeat for each score layer in the file.

Then attach the score layer to the cut layer it belongs to. Select the score layer, hold Shift, select the cut layer, and click Attach. Without this, your machine scores the lines somewhere off on their own piece of paper, nowhere near the shape they belong to.

If Score is not in your Operation list, check the machine you have selected at the top of the screen. Design Space only shows the operations your model supports.

This step used to live behind a scissor icon and a Layer Attributes panel. Cricut moved it to the Operation dropdown, so older tutorials will point you to a page that no longer exists.

Step 8: Make It

Click Make.

Design Space will ask if you would like to save the project. Say yes. Saving keeps everything you attached and grouped, so if you come back to this project in a year, it is ready to cut with no setup at all. Click Save, name your project, choose the collection you want to save it to, then click Save again.

Now you land on the mat preview. What you see here is exactly what your machine will cut, so this is where you make adjustments.

Check your layout. If you attached your groups, the arrangement should look the way we set it up. Click a shape to select it if you need to move it, or use the three dots at the top left to move it to a different mat or hide it.

Change your material size. Use the dropdown on the left. We often switch to 8.5 x 11-inch text weight paper.

Cut multiples. Enter the number in the top-left corner and click Apply—every mat updates.

Mirror. Turn this on only for iron-on vinyl. Leave it off for paper, cardstock, felt, and crepe.

When your mats look right, click Continue.

Step 9: Choose Your Material Setting

Select the material from the dropdown in Design Space. The designer notes told you which one we used.

If you are on an Explore 3, 4, or 5, there is no dial on your machine anymore. Cricut moved material selection fully into the software. Older Explore models still have the physical dial, and setting it to Custom lets Design Space take over.

Do a test cut on a scrap before you commit a full sheet. If the blade does not get all the way through, use the More Pressure option rather than jumping to a heavier material setting. More Pressure adjusts the cut without changing how the machine handles the material.

Then follow the prompts to load your tools and mats.

Cutting Crepe Paper on a Cricut Maker

Crepe paper deserves its own section, because it does not behave like anything else you will cut.

  • Crepe paper cuts on the Cricut Maker family only. The rotary blade is what makes it possible, and it is a Maker tool.
  • Use the rotary blade. The fine point blade will drag and tear the fibers.
  • Use the pink fabric mat. It grips crepe without pulling it out of shape.
  • Watch your grain direction. The lines in crepe run one way, and our designer notes layer tells you which way to lay the sheet so petals cup and stretch correctly. Cut a petal against the grain, and it will not shape.
  • Know your dimensions. Our crepe paper is 10 inches tall and comes on a roll, so you can cut whatever width you need, up to the 12-inch width of your mat. That 10-inch height is the measurement to watch on your canvas because it is the one you cannot change.

When you choose the crepe paper setting, Design Space should automatically prompt you for the rotary blade; if it does not, select Edit Tools and choose it yourself.

Which Cricut Machines Work with Our Files

Any Cricut that runs Design Space can open our SVG files. What differs is what each machine can do with them.

Cricut Maker 4 and Maker 3 cut everything we design, including crepe paper, felt, and fabric. If paper flowers are your reason for owning a machine, this is the family to be in.

Cricut Explore 5, Explore 4, Explore 3, and Explore Air 2 handle cardstock, text weight paper, vinyl, and iron-on beautifully. They do not take the rotary blade, so crepe paper is out.

Cricut Venture cuts wide format and is built for batch work.

Cricut Joy: We do not test our files on the Cricut Joy family, so we cannot say how they perform on it. Those machines cut narrower than a standard mat, so check a project's dimensions against your machine before you begin.

Cricut Expression, Cricut Mini, and other pre-Design Space machines cannot use SVG files. They run older software that never supported the format.

Silhouette and Brother ScanNCut users can generally import our SVG files as well. We design and test on Cricut, so we cannot walk you through those interfaces, but the files themselves are a standard format.

Common Questions

Design Space says my file is not supported. What happened? Your file is almost certainly still zipped. Go back and unzip the folder first, then upload the file ending in .svg.

Why does it say my file is too large for the mat? The designer notes layer is being counted in the measurement. Hide that layer with the eye icon, and the size will correct itself.

Design Space rearranged all of my pieces. Why? The color groups were not attached. Go back to the canvas, select each group, then click Attach before clicking Make.

My pieces came out rotated on the mat. Unattached groups allow Design Space to rotate pieces, which runs counter to the grain. Attach every group, and do not rotate anything yourself.

My machine cut the score lines instead of scoring them. The Operation was still set to Basic Cut. Select the layer, open the Operation dropdown, and choose Score.

My machine scored in the wrong place. The score layer was not attached. Select both the score layer and its cut layer, then click Attach before you click Make.

Can I upload several SVG files at once? No. Design Space takes one at a time.

Do I need Cricut Access to use your files? No. Cricut Access is a Cricut subscription that includes access to their image library. Uploading your own SVG files is free.

I bought one of Lia's books. Where are my files? Each book has its own download page and a code printed inside. Cutting Machine Crafts lists it on page 12. Crepe Paper Flowers lists it on page 31. And Paper Flower Garden has a QR code. You do not need a membership to download book files.

Prefer to Watch?

Reading through steps is one thing. Watching someone do it is another.

We have recently released our new Cricut Maker Foundation Series in Craft Academy, which shows you all the steps from downloading our files to setting the cut settings for all the different materials. This is available for everyone to view and learn.

More to Explore

Plenty of places will teach you how to operate your Cricut. We are more interested in what you make with it.

Most of our projects include SVG cut files for Cricut and Silhouette machines. Browse the full SVG cut file library to see what you could be making this weekend. Or explore paper flowers, felt crafts, and cutting machine crafts by category.

Membership opens access to the full library of project tutorials, including pattern downloads, written instructions, and video workshops. Join our community of crafters and start making.

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