Making a stencil is a fun way of keeping your favorite words in sight and an easy way to decorate your walls or house items. If you feel like changing your decorations, maybe it is time to design a few words to keep you motivated.

How to Make Stencils with Cricut Design Space

You can make your stencils on various materials like; contact paper, plastic sheets, wood, vinyl, fabric, or reusable sheets. The following is a guide for making a vinyl stencil with a Cricut maker at home.

Step 1: Choose your favorite words

Before starting with the design, have your words ready, so you can proceed to step 2 below.

Step 2: Choose the best font for your phrase or saying

To make your stencil design, navigate to text on your Cricut machine. Here, navigate to the top bar to find the available fonts.

The font dropdown will have different fonts, the machine's as well as your saved fonts. Pich the one font that will look good on the area you want to decorate.

Step 3: Space your lines

When making your stencils, you can decide to make many lines on one stencil material. In this case, choose one text box for each line for your designs to look organized.

After you make your first line in your chosen font, hit a new text box for your second line. You can opt for a different font and size for your new line.

Step 4: Ungroup your text

Depending on the font you choose, your letters might look separated in the design space. You don't want to proceed further without rearranging these, as your stencil designs might look weird.

To rectify, highlight your text and hit the ungroup button in the top right of your design area. Here, you will notice that your letters are separated, allowing you to move them closer to each other. For the best natural results, click and drag the letters so that they overlap each other. Also, make sure the letters don't show individually if you don't want them cut like that.

Step 5: Click the weld key

Once your letters are well planned, you can click the weld key, and it will cut them as one word or in the layout you prefer.

After welding, you can arrange the text lines the way you want your designs to appear and then attach them to prevent the Circut from arranging them in the most economical manner.

Ensure all your letters are in a box, then click on the attach button on your design screen. You will notice that once you attach the text, it will stay together even when you click and drag.

Step 6: How to make a stencil

In this step, you want to complete your stencil in Cricut design process.

a) Navigate to the toolbar, then shapes, then choose the square shape. Stretch the box to cover your text design. Once your text is fully covered, select the option 'move to back' to bring the box behind your text. To make sure you see the box and the text, you can pick different colors from the color options.

b) You will also need to size your stencil in this step. You can choose its size to be that of the board you are painting on. Once done, center your design on the rectangle.

c) The next thing you need to do is attach the design to the rectangle size. To do so, click and drag your design into the rectangular box, then click the attack button on your design space. Once finished, you will notice the text color goes away, and you can see the lines your Cricut will cut.

d) Before cutting, attach the material you want to use on the cutting mat. If you want to make stencil vinyl, you can place a piece of vinyl material on your cutting mat. For this step, you need to make sure your cutting mat is larger than the vinyl material you use. So, depending on the size of your stencil design, make sure the cutting mat is at least half an inch wider.

e) Load the mat with your stencil material to the Cricut Machine, and press the Start button to begin the cutting process. You will be able to view the cutting mat from the Design space, which will also warn you about the size of your design if there is a problem.

f) Once the cutting is done, peel the excess vinyl from your design rectangle. Once removed, use a weeding tool to pull your vinyl from the letters while making sure you don't damage the letters.

g) And there you have it, your stencil is ready to transfer to your DIY home decor project!

How to Upload an SVG File to the Design Space to Make a Stencil with Your Cricut

If you are not up to the challenge of making your designs, it is okay to upload a file in the design space to make stencils.

A Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) is a file made with very precise lines that won't lose quality when resized. SVG files are easy to use on a cutting machine like the Cricut.

You can purchase SVG cut files online, or you can use ones you make yourself for your DIY Cricut stencil vinyl in this guide.

Step 1: Uploading the design

Once you have the perfect file saved on your computer, make sure to extract it if it's a ZIP file.

Open the design space for a new project. On the left panel of the design area, click on the Upload option and select your image. Continue with the upload even if the Cricut warns you about unsupported text elements. Once the upload is complete, remember to save it.

Step 2: Prepare for cutting

Check your file to see if it needs welding or attaching. To do this, study the layers bar to see if your letters or shapes are listed separately. If so, follow the steps above to weld and attach them.

To finish your vinyl stenciling, follow the steps above on how to make a stencil with Cricut.