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Hey! How are you holding up? The past few weeks have been a little rough for me. I am a complete homebody by choice… but I didn’t realize how much I like to leave and come back. Trips to Target, Ikea, and Starbucks make me so happy. Not having the ability to just run out without a care in the world has been tough for me. I miss seeing my friends and even though I am not a hugger, I miss squeezing them and telling them I love them. But I know just how important it is to stay home to keep our essential workers safe and slow the spread of the virus, so of course, I am happy to stay home… just missing the normalcy of my old schedule.
Since I am only leaving the house to do a grocery pickup or walk Poppy, I thought I would join in on the Cricut Window Challenge and add a message of hope to my window for people to enjoy as they walk by. I hope you will join me in this challenge by creating your own beautiful window scene or by downloading the one I created and posting it in your window.
Download the file I used here!
If you are looking for the SVG used for my window design, you can download that here!
After you download the SVG, upload it to Cricut’s Design Space. If you need help with that, I have a few YouTube videos to help you out. If you are using an iOS device like an iPad or and iPhone, check out this video. Or if you are using a laptop/ computer check out this video.
Draw Your Window in Design Space
To begin, I measured the size of my window. My window slides open with a 3″ white divider down the center. I measured each side of the glass. From the inside of my house, the left side is 26.5″ wide by 56″ and the right side is 25.5″ wide by 56″ tall. To make my life easy, I decided to say they were both 25.5″ wide.
I created rectangles to represent each side of the window and the center divide of my window.
Resize Your Design to Fit Your Window
This part is a little tricky since Design Space doesn’t allow you to zoom out further than 25%. Place your uploaded design on top of your window and resize until you are happy with the size.
Now we know these images are all way too big to cut on our Cricut machine, so we are going to slice them up so that they will work with our machines. But before we start slicing, decide how you are going to apply your design. I used cardstock for the rainbow inside my window. So if you’d like to do that, mirror your image before you cut it. I used vinyl on the outside of my window so I won’t need to mirror that.
Now that my rainbow is mirrored, I am ready to slice apart my design.
Slice Apart Your Design
This next part is a little advanced. Your lettering will fit on a long 12×24″ mat if you are using vinyl, but the rainbow will need to be sliced apart creating a puzzle like rainbow. This part of the project took the longest! So please do not get discouraged here. Check out the videos below to see how I tackled slicing my rainbow in Design Space. I typically use Adobe Illustrator to make this process go a lot quicker, so I am curious if you would like to see Illustrator tutorials in the future! I wish all windows were the same so that you didn’t have to slice this all up, but hopefully this will result in the perfect rainbow for your window. Or maybe you’ll decide that you just want to free hand draw it and cut it out on some poster board haha!
Tape Up Your Rainbow
Since your rainbow is mirrored, you will tape it on the inside of your window. I used a few small pieces of regular ole’ tape and taped the rainbow up in my window. I left the bottom of the rainbow free of any tape so I could slip my clouds in front of the arches once my rainbow was up.
Apply Your Vinyl
Once your rainbow is up, apply your vinyl to the outside of your window. I tried to apply my vinyl to the inside of my window (mirrored) and I did not like how it turned out. It was super dull and difficult to read. I ended up taking it all down and applying it to the outside. So save yourself some time and just apply it to the outside if you can!
If you are unfamiliar about the hinge method, check out this post to learn all about it!
I know this project is a little intimidating, but once you learn how to slice in Design Space, you will be making these large projects whenever you can! Please don’t hesitate to leave a comment or contact me if you get hung up! If you share your projects on social media, don’t forget to tag me and use the hashtag #cricutwindowchallenge so others can see your messages of hope! We will get through this together!
Have Questions or want to connect!?
Thanks so much for checking out this tutorial!
Happy crafting & stay safe!
Karley
