Cricut & Inkpad – Creating Joined up Vector Text

by Lindsay in Cricut

Hi, it’s Lindsay. We’ve had a few emails from Inkpad users about the best way to create joined up text for cutting machines, so I thought what better excuse to play with my Cricut and make a video about it.

It is a pretty simple process, whether you are using a font that already appears joined up, or you want to squish some letters together yourself. Either way it is the same process in Inkpad.

The first thing we need to do is pick our font. I’m going to use Snell Roundhand in Black as it is a system font so it will be available on all iPads, but this will work with any font you choose.

To look at my font appears as though it is already joined up, but that is just the way the letters overlap. If I use two fingers to zoom on my canvas, it will show the path of each letter and you can clearly see that each letter is still separate and we want this word to be one closed path.

With my text selected, I’ll use Create Outlines from Text from the Path menu. My word is now no longer text, instead it is a series of separate paths and can no longer be edited as text.

I’m now going to put my drawing into Outline Mode. You can do this here in the Drawing tab of the Settings menu. This is not a necessary step, but it will show how the paths change when I unite them, which is the next step.

Because I have used a font that already overlaps, I don’t need to move anything, but if your letters are spaced out now is the time to move them. Holding a second finger on your screen while moving an object will help constrain it in the direction you are dragging and in this case will keep the vertical alignment of your text.

I’ll just undo that because my ‘O’ was already in the right place. Now everything is back where is should be I will select my word and then from the Path menu chose Unite. Because my drawing is in Outline mode you can see how the letters have all joined together to form one path. I’ll turn off outline mode so you can see the finished result.

Very nice. There is one thing to note about this path and that is the inside of the ‘E’ and the ‘O’. These are a little bit special, they are part of the word ‘Hello’, but when selecting the word you need to ensure all paths are selected, otherwise they will get left behind! If I only touch the ‘L’ and drag, you’ll see strange things start to happen. Everything is working fine, so don’t worry, but if you do want to move your word make sure to select all the paths before dragging.

I’ll pop everything back into place so I can export my file as an SVG and head over to Design Space to import it.

Once imported, everything is ready to send to my mat and cut it out.

I’ll piggle this off my mat and there you, go a lovely sparkly ‘Hello’ from me to you!

Lindsay.