I am a HUGE overthinker, so I will not tell you how much time went into selecting the font, or how many fonts I actually looked at.  Who am I kidding, of course I am going to tell you! This is a safe place, right?  Comment below, if the majority of your time desiging is picking out fonts! I probably looked at a dozen fonts.  And googled and browsed pinterest, and even downloaded some from Creative Fabrica.

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After searching for the right font, I landed on the system font “broadway”.  If you need help downloading different fonts into your computer, check out this post here. 

I measured my shirt I was using, and that helped me to confirm the design should be no more than 10 inches wide.  Once the design is finalize you can group everything together and resize.  

Once the font was the size I wanted, I was able to build the design around the font. 

For this design the jet plane needed to fix well in the center of the design.  If you select the text and the jet plane, then at the top of the screen select Align then Center Horizontally, Cricut Design space will put the jet plane directly in the center of your text.  I resized the jet plane to the look I was going for.  The Jet is about 1.25 the height of the text and placed very close to the top of the text.   

Arranging these stars is a labor of love.  I utilized my inspiration photo from our target run. In the design I was trying to duplicate, I knew I wanted the stars to start their circle around the design in the center of the second letter, and end in the second to last letter of my text.  From the “O” in TOP and the “A” in DAD.

The first star I placed was at the top of the Jet.  Here I was able to make the star the size that seems correct to my eye.  Which is Width of .826 and a Height of .833.  I manually changed the size of the stars by selecting them and draging them in and out. The sizing above is just the end result of my manually sizing.

Then I duplicatd that star  6 times, for a total of 7 stars.  I then placed 1 of the duplicated stars above the “O” in Top and another duplicated star above the “A” in Dad.  I played around with placement of the stars to make a circle around the deisgn.

The I duplicated the starts again and placed them below the text to “close” the circle of stars.  There is no easier way, that I know of to do this.  If YOU have an easier way, please comment below.

This step is probably the most difficult from a techincal stand point.  I unlocked the size for the square, so that I could make it a long and skinny rectangle. Once it was the size I wanted, I duplicated it twice, creating 3 thick lines below the text.

The star at the bottom will insterect with these lines.  So that the star and the line didn’t blend together, I utilized the slice tool.  But first I need to make my star bigger, without making it bigger.  Yes this is possible.

I selected the ONE star that needed to be outlined.  Then I went up to the tools and selected offset.

Since I am using starts I wanted a sharper corner, so I changed the Corner feature in the offset to be the 90 degree angle option.  I also only needed a small area for this offset, so I lowered the distance to 0.05.

Here is the tricky part … Once you hit apply and the offset is in place, you want to remove the orginal shape but leave the offset behind.  DO NOT DELTE the orignal shape.  Just move it to the side.  Now we are going to Slice the offset into the line.  Select the offset star and the first line. And then go to the bottom right of your screen in Cricut Design Space and select Slice.  If slice is not avaialble to be selected, make sure you have ONLY the two shapes you want sliced.  Slice ONLY works when TWO elements are selected.  No more or less.

When you initally select slice the elements are going to look the same.  But now there are more layers in your layers panel, and they are named “slice result”.  First I grabbed the offset, and move it out of the way, and deleted it. Then you want to find the one or two tiny pieces that were sliced from the line and delete those.  I suggest you zoom into your design to help find the two small pieces that have been sliced from the line.  Now your line should have one or two little cut outs in it.  Move the original star back up to it original position.  Now the star should fit snuggly next to the line with a bit of white space between the star and the line. Then repeat these steps for the stars that blend into the lines.

Now the design is done!  But wait, before you start moving things around make sure that the design is either Grouped, or Attached.  I attached my design, as I was cutting this out together on ONE color.  If you have multiple colors you will want to attached each color and then group the attached colors together.  Why?  Because once it is grouped or attached you can resize the design to fit any size t-shirt!

I hope this was helpful and inspires you to get creative inside Cricut Design space.  Cricut Design Space can be intimidating at first, but jump in and check it out.  They more you make the easier it will be! 

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