This is the fifth in a series of projects to learn to use the features of Cricut Design Space. These projects create something that likely everyone can use: gift tags! They are small, quick projects designed to be useful and use inexpensive cardstock to learn how to use Design Space.
We’ve covered lots of basics, now we’re going to make some gift tags with a bit more flair.
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1. Open the Project from Lesson 4
It’s likely has a name starting with “Lesson 3,” since that’s what we named the original project we saved in Lesson 3 and modified in Lesson 4.
It has a blue rectangle (4″x2″ or 10cm x 3.5cm) and a yellow rectangle (3.6″x1.6″ or 9cm x 2.5cm).
2. Place a Star
Note to Android users on a small screen: you may want to read through the steps first, then open the Android Tips at the end of the section.
➀Place a star.
By now you probably can do this yourself, but if you need refreshing, see Lesson 2 to place the star.
➁Resize it to 1″ (2.5 cm).
By now you probably can do this yourself, but if you need refreshing, see Lesson 4 to resize it to precise measurements.
➂Move the star over the right side of the yellow rectangle.
There’s a specific location that sets us up for the next lesson — it should be centered in the right half of the yellow rectangle as shown below. Eyeballing it is good enough for right now. (Note the Android app will try to help you align to tops, bottoms, and centers of other objects by placing a yellow line and snapping to it.)
Note that there are three items listed in the Layers Pane.
The use of a mouse and keyboard on computers affords additional ways of interacting with Design Space that aren’t available on an Android device. One of the differences is that dragging small objects (a 1″ star) on a small screen (particularly phones) is difficult. It seems to want to resize or rotate the star instead of moving it.
To make this easier, before resizing the star, move it to where it overlaps on the right side of the other rectangles. Now resize the star to 1″ (2.5cm) wide.
At this point, zoom in by pinching your fingers apart. Put your two fingers close together over the rectangle, then spread your fingers before releasing.
With the screen zoomed it, the larger star is easier to “grab” in the middle and move it instead of grabbing the rotate or resize handles.
3. Slice out the Star
➀Select both the black star and the yellow rectangle. As you select them, a bounding box will enclose all the objects.
The directions are specific to the device you are using. Select your device below.
Browser users have several options to choose from Any of these methods will work and it’s personal preference as to which you want to use.
1. Shift-Click
To select multiple objects, select the first object by clicking on it. Then hold down the Shift key and click on the other objects.
As long as you’re holding the Shift key down when you click, you can let up on it without losing the selected items. If you click without holding down Shift, you’ll lose the multiple selection. If you grab something by accident and want to remove it from the multiple selection, Shift-click on it again.
2. Draw a box around the objects
Click and hold anywhere on the blank canvas, then drag the blue box around all the items you want to select. This will select ALL items that the box covers — so selecting the inner rectangle and square will be difficult using this method.
Selection methods can be combined, so draw a box around the entire tag (all three objects), then Shift-Click the blue one to remove it.
3. Use the Layers Pane
The Layers Pane shows us three items.
If you click anywhere on the layer description*, it selects the corresponding object, then darkens the background to indicate the layer is selected. Below is the screenshot with the yellow rectangle and black square selected.
*You can click anywhere except the eye icon. Clicking on the eye icon hides the object and puts a slash through the icon. Clicking the slashed icon unhides it.
Android users have one way to select multiple items. Turn on the Layers Pane using the Layers button in the bottom menu. The Layers Pane overlays the screen.
Clicking once anywhere on the layer description selects the item, indicated by the green lines at the left of the layer description (and the bounding box around the item). Long-press on other items to add them to the selection.
Select too many things? Remove them from the selection set by long-pressing again.
Be sure to long press. A tap on a layer will unselect everything to select the one object you tapped.
➁Click on the Slice tool to cut a star shape out of the yellow rectangle.
Is the Slice tool greyed-out and not clickable? It might be that you only have one item selected. Slice requires at least two objects.
Looking at the results of the slice command, it doesn’t visually look any different! Looking at the Layers Pane, there are now four layers instead of three. The star, the yellow rectangle with the star cutout, and the cutout of the yellow rectangle are a result of the slice command. Their names are changed to “Slice Result.”
If you were to make this now, you would need three mats (black, yellow, and blue), and when you finish, you’ll have two yellow stars. One is the leftover cut out of the yellow rectangle, and it creates another yellow rectangle that cuts. The black star and extra yellow star aren’t needed for this project, so we’ll delete them.
The stars are stacked on each other. If you move the black star to below the rectangles, then move the yellow star, you’ll see the blue rectangle in the star-shaped hole in the yellow rectangle.
➂Delete the extra stars.
The easiest way to delete them is to select them (either click on shape or click on the layer) and click on the delete handle 
. Browser users can also tap Delete key to delete a selected item.
The delete methods work if multiple items are selected. The delete handle and the delete key both delete all selected items.
4. Make It
➀First, SAVE YOUR WORK. There are two reasons: we will build on this in the next lesson, and now is a great time to get in a habit of saving your work periodically to ensure you don’t lose a lot of hard work.
➁Select the Make It button and follow the prompts. The mats should be fed exactly like Lesson 4, though you’ll mount the cardstock with an unused corner in the upper right hand corner.
➂Once you finish cutting the items, assemble them like in Lesson 4.
So what do you think? That was pretty easy, right? Lesson 5 turns this same design into a folded card.