How to Attach Colors in Cricut Design Space

Hi! And welcome back to our blog! This week I will be showing you the process of attaching colors together in Cricut Design Space. 

Let’s start off with how the program operates normally when uploading a design. Design Space has a built in feature that optimizes the mat layout so that you can save as much vinyl as possible when cutting your project. For this example I will be using this cup wrap design which I have uploaded to my canvas:

Upon clicking “make it” you will see the result is different from the original layout of the design. We lose that wrapped cup shape we originally had - instead the program has arranged our cut pieces on the mat in a way that will save me vinyl. This is a great feature for less complex designs, but with a more intricate file that we don’t want to place by hand, we need to keep the layout the same when cutting. 

Cricut offers its users two great functionalities for this; attach and weld. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as clicking the attach button and cutting away! When we select our entire design and use the attach feature, this is what happens:

Our entire design turns one color! This would work if your design only had one color, but in my example file we have 4 different color layers that we need to keep separate. The solution to this is attaching by color. To do this we need to go through the layers panel and select all pieces of the same color, and once selected we can use the attach feature! Let’s try it:

Now we have all red shapes attached together in a cup wrap shape, and on it’s own mat! After continuing with the rest of the colors in your design, you will be left with something like this:

You will see that your design looks exactly the same but your layers panel will now show attached groups. Here I have 4 different groups of colors but you could have more or less depending on the design you use! 

The next step is the cut. Once we click “make it”, our mats should be organized by group and look like this:

The program no longer re-arranged our pieces to save vinyl, and cutting and layering this project will be a breeze!

For projects where the pieces in each color layer need to fit together perfectly, it can be time consuming and frustrating to have to place each shape by hand. This feature saves a ton of time, and makes it easy for us to transfer it directly onto our finished product in the proper format. 

Hope this helps and I’ll see you back here next week!