- Hello and welcome. This is Angie with
thecountrychiccottage.net. So today's video is sponsored by Michaels, however all projects
and opinions are my own. Today I'm gonna use my Cricut machine and I'm gonna make my own
SVG file from a picture. Any picture you take,
camera, with your phone, you can turn it into a cut
file for your Cricut machine and make all sorts of projects. What I'm gonna do is
take a picture of my dog. I'm gonna turn it into an SVG
file, five different ways. So five different ways
to make the cut file. And then we're gonna use it to make both a cup as
well as a cute shirt. Now, which of the five
different ways is best? That's the first thing you're gonna ask. First, let's take a look
at the five different ways, and then we will kind of talk
about which way's the best and which way you should use. The first thing I recommend you do is remove the background from your image and you don't need fancy
software to do this at all. This website is remove.bg. I will drop links to all
these websites below. You can upload any image. Then once that image is uploaded, it will remove the background for you and then you can download it either the smaller version or a
high res version, either one and then we'll use those
to make our SVG file. The first website we are gonna talk about is picsvg.com. You just upload your picture, the one with the background removed, then you can scroll
down and you can choose from the level of detail
and I'd like to use strong. And then the filters will
give you various results. So you can actually play with those and see which one you liked best. So this is the invert two. Here's the invert one, here's the invert three, and the invert four. And then the ready one, ready two, and ready three. So you can pick which one
of these you like best if you like any of those from picksvg.com. So let's move on to our other options. This one is vectormagic.com. And again, we'll pick our image
with the background removed. So it uploads, vectorizes it, all for you. Now this version has several colors, but we want an SVG file
with minimal colors. So what I like to do is pick custom and do a color palette
with just white and black. Then once you have a white
and black color palette, it's beginning to look
more like an SVG file and we you can go and we can play with these detail levels. So we can move that to
high if we would like, then we can, the remove
background is actually only available on the desktop version, but we've already removed the background, but we can edit some of the results. You we can actually remove pieces in here. So we can do that with the paint bucket or with I like this little zap tool and you can actually zoom in and just hit it with that lightning bolt. And you can remove all
these access objects, right in Vector Magic. And if you mess up and
hit outside of that, just, clicking undo at the top will undo anything that you made a mistake on. So you can't really change
the look of the SVG. So if you like the looks of this outputs, you can definitely clean
it up right in here and then use this as your image, but let's take a look at
some maybe better options. Next step is IMGvector.com. Once again, we'll pick our image. Then once we've picked our image, you can kind of see the preview. Now, the only thing about this one is if you've removed the background it's sort of inverted from the other ones like it sees the background is black and if you click there
isn't an invert box. But if you click that, it
makes the black of your image white but the background
doesn't actually stay to change. I do like this one and
you can get a preview of what it would look like, but the image background
being that PNG is an issue. So instead I used a website
called pngtojpeg.com and I used that to convert
my image with the background removed to a JPEG file
instead of a PNG file. Now I get a look more like I want. So if you're gonna use IMGvector.com, you want to be sure to do that. And this one I love because I can alter the detail adding in more or less, and kind of getting a look
that I want for my project. And then once you're done with this, you can download it and any of these and add them to your Cricut. And we will go over how to actually add those to your Cricut machine. The next one we're gonna
talk about is Inkscape. Now Inkscape is a free download, but you do have to download
it to your machine. So I already downloaded the file and installed it on my machine. So let's take a look inside the software and how you convert an
image to an SVG file. Okay so here a look inside of Inkscape and what we want to do
is to import our file so we go to file, import, and
then we will import the one, the PNG image, the first image we used, the defaults are fine here. So embed from file, no rendering mode. Okay, so now your file is on Inkscape and we can move that to the center and we can go to path, trace bitmap. We want to have multiple
scans, six scans are fine, graze, check the smooth and the
stack box, and click update. And now you can see
your file on the screen. Now we're gonna pick
like one of these layers. So how it looks here is not necessarily what your SVG is gonna be, then
we'll choose stop and okay, and then we can close this. Now we'll have our image that
we traced with our layers, as well as our original image. We can pick the original
image and get rid of that. We don't need that any longer, so we can pick our layers
and go to object, ungroup. I can pick each of those and
kind of move them around. So pick it and click the black square and you can change it to
black to get a better idea of what it will look like as an SVG. Alright, so once I've
changed them all to black, so I have five left here and I'm going to delete the ones like this one's way too dark. I don't want it. This one doesn't have enough
detail, not liking this one. So it's basically
between these two for me. So we can pick the two
and then zoom in using the zoom to selection window, and then just kind of pick
which one we like best. Yeah. So we'll just go ahead
and get rid of the one we don't want. What we're gonna do is pick
the second button up here. So it's basically the edit pass by node, and we're gonna pick and you can see a ton of nodes on this and we're actually gonna
zoom in to the selection, then pick the nodes. And what you can do is
actually delete some of these. So what I can do is draw a
box around this because it, I don't need that. So you can just start drawing a box around the pieces you don't need. This is a great way to clean
this up and then import it. So I could even clean up like this whole, if I didn't want any of
this, I just wanted his face. I could clean up these nodes and just have the face as my SVG. So it just depends on what you want. And the more of this that you clean up, the better it will cut because
all of these little bitty outlines is actually a cut. So each of these nodes is where your blade actually changes direction. So the fewer of those you
have the actual better it's gonna cut and the less
weeding you'll have to do so you can clean this
up as much as you want, and then you can save it to import it into Cricut Design Space. So our final way to
convert an image to an SVG is to actually not
converted to an SVG at all. We can actually upload it
directly into Cricut Design Space and get a similar look. So we want to upload our image and browse, and we'll want that PNG
image that we started with with the background removed and we are gonna do Complex on this. Now we can clean this up
so we can select and erase any areas we'd like to, we could use this eraser
and erase whole areas. We could use select and erase, and we can erase things like
that white area right there. And we can actually zoom in
and just start picking white or light areas and removing
those from the file. And so when we do this, it's cleaning it up and it'll
look more like the programs we just used, but we didn't
have to use anything else. Right. We just use Cricut Design Space. We just picked these light areas. I would actually probably
just, the paws are so light that we could just use this eraser. We could just get rid of this whole thing. And let's say we just want his face. Then we're gonna continue
with the select and erase tool and select those light areas. Then we can actually
hit the preview button and we can preview what
it's gonna look like. So not quite cleaned up enough, I'm just gonna keep clicking. And then I'll kind of show you the results once I have it as cleaned
up as I would like, okay. So after cleaning up for quite a while, this is where I've gotten to. So I've definitely had
some of the SVG converters that I'd liked a little bit better, but it's definitely an
option for some of your files to just do it right in
Cricut Design Space. So now that we've looked at
those five different websites, I've dropped all the
links for those below. I think you'll see that
it really depends on what you're making, which
one you might want to use. I think all five ways are
really good resources for making an SVG from a picture and
it's totally gonna depend on the picture you have
and what you want the style of your project to be, which
of the SVG files you choose. So I chose my version
and now let's take a look at getting that into Cricut Design Space. Alright, so I have decided
on one of my SVGs to upload. So I'm gonna upload it as an SVG file. And you can see that here
and then we're gonna save it. So with this, I can't actually clean
it up before I upload it, but I can clean it up
once I get it in here. So it is a true SVG file I will be left with what I have in here. Some of these come in
as a bunch of layers. This one comes in as
one cut, which is nice. This one was actually from
the IMGvector.com website. So make sure that your image is picked and then click contour. And you should be able to see
all the little bits and pieces that are on your image. And what we can do is start picking these, and those will hide them. So some of these that I just
really don't want on there, I can hide. This is much faster than any other way. So I'm just gonna hide
the contours I don't want. And then we'll talk about projects we can make with our
newly created SVG file. Alright, so this is the SVG I
decided on for this project. So it's from pickSVG and I
downloaded it from the website and then uploaded it
to Cricut Design Space. I added this heart as a shape
right in Cricut Design Space. Now the only thing about pickSVG is that it comes in as a
million different cuts. We will need to weld this
in order to slice it. So I'm gonna click weld. Once you weld this it can't be undone so be sure that you're ready
to weld it when you do. And then I'm gonna make
a copy of this heart just so I don't mess it up and we're gonna put it over
where we want this to be. Then I'm gonna pick the heart and the dog, and we're gonna click splice. Now I want to get rid of this heart now. I want to get rid of this cut, this cut. And now I have like a really
odd two different cuts here. So the easiest way, because it's so many little pieces contour would work, but the easiest way is
to kind of draw a square around the pieces you
don't want at this point. And then for each one of these
I'm gonna pick both those, slice and I'm gonna slowly eliminate all the pieces I don't
want, by deleting them off. So I'm gonna continue to
draw shapes around this till I'm left with just the dog portion that goes inside of this heart. Once I have that, I can move the heart that I
made the copy of over this and now I have my dog that
I took a picture of outside, inside of a heart. So now that I have that on my Cricut, it is time to make a project. The first project I'm gonna make is I'm gonna take a plain
stainless steel tumbler from Michaels, I'm gonna take some vinyl and I'm gonna make a cute
tumbler with my dog's picture, as well as the words dog mom
on it, super cute project and super easy to make, makes amazing personalized gift ideas. Let's get started on this project. The supplies you're gonna need for your project are as follows. So you're gonna need your Cricut machine, your Cricut Easy Press if you're doing a fabric project, and you're gonna need your surfaces. So we're gonna make two projects. We're gonna make one shirt fabric project with the Easy Press and
then we're gonna make a tumbler with adhesive
vinyl and transfer tape. You need any type of heat
transfer vinyl or adhesive vinyl that you would like to
use for your project. Now for a tumbler like this, I do recommend that you get
some kind of permanent adhesive vinyl so there's an Oracal
brand or a Cricut brand, both available at Michaels. And then for the shirt project you will need some iron on or HTV and I have the Caesar and a Cricut brand, and you can use either
one of those, again, both available Michaels . With your easy press
you're gonna want to use an easy press mat or a folded up towel. And for both adhesive vinyl as
well as heat transfer vinyl, you'll want some weeding tools and then for the adhesive vinyl you may want a scraper
to actually adhere that to your tumbler or any other surface. So let's make a couple of
example projects, but again, the same technique can be
used for multiple projects. So first we're gonna
cut our adhesive vinyl, and I'm gonna place this down on the mat. So I'm gonna cut the
dog itself out of white, and then I'm gonna cut the
heart out of this pink. So we just place it face up on the mat and a blue mat works fine, and then we can load this into our Cricut. So I have my fine point blade
already loaded into my machine and I'll just press the
blinking C to start the cut. Then once our cut is done we'll just press the
unload to unload the mat from the machine and now
we can weed our design. Alright, it's often easier to weed these really intricate designs just leave them on the mat and weed them. I did want mention that these SVG files have a lot of really small details. You can hide a lot of those
using contour before you cut but a lot of them like
it doesn't really matter if they're in there or not. I'll do my best to get a majority of them, but if the really small details do not stay on the backing paper I'm not gonna worry about it. So we just want to pull
away all the excess leaving just what we want on our cup
on the actual backing paper. Alright, and then I'll just
go back in and weed away any of these really small pieces, like the insides of the eyes and the nose before we cut and add our heart, then once you're done
weeding the white portion it's time to cut the pink. So we'll remove the
white that's been weeded, add the pink to our mat in the same way and cut the heart in the same manner. Now we're gonna add both of our
color to some transfer tape. So just peel back the
transfer tape itself, and I'm gonna add it to
the white portion first. So just put the transfer
tape over the white and use your scraper to
adhere it really well. So since the pieces are so
small, you want to rub over it in several directions and then
get it from the back as well. And we can peel this backing paper away, just make sure all of the white pieces stay on the transfer
tape as you peel it back. Then we'll add this design to our heart. So we're gonna put it located
on to the heart itself. Then once again use your
scraper, burnish down well. Peel back the backing paper. Now your design is ready
to put on your tumbler. Now we start with a clean
tumbler, locate our design, and then I like to start in the center and push it out towards the side especially since our surface is curved. Then we'll just burnish
it down really well, and peel that transfer tape back and there you have a cute tumbler with your dog's face on it. Now this tumbler was easy,
cute, perfect gift idea. Let's try heat transfer vinyl
with the same technique. I'm gonna make the project
a little larger this time so I'm gonna make this shirt. So let's see how to work
with heat transfer vinyl and your own SVG file. So now let's make our tee shirt. The process for cutting is
almost exactly the same. You just need to be
sure to marry your cuts and place your material
face down on the mat and then you can weed
them with the weeding tool just like we did the adhesive vinyl. The application process, however,
is a little bit different. You will need your easy press,
which has been heating up. You can find the time and the temperature on the Cricut heat guide. What I like to do is
preheat my shirt first and find the center at the same time. So what you'll do is
fold the shirt in half, matching up the seams, and then just briefly press
on the front of the shirt. I'm actually gonna flip this over. I'm gonna press from this other side just to get out any wrinkles
or moisture on this side. And then if we unfold, now
we can see sort of aligned down the center that can
give us our center mark. We will need to do these
in two different presses. So what I like to do is put
them on top of one another first and then locate the entire
assembly on my shirt. So I'm using the center line as a guide, and then I'm using the color
and we'll place it a little bit down from the color. And then you just want to make sure it's still on your easy press mat and then we'll peel back this first layer. We're gonna press one layer at a time. So we're gonna use our easy press and press the first
layer for the full time then we'll remove the easy press. We're gonna allow this to
cool before we peel back this carrier sheet. Now once this is cool we can start peeling back the carrier sheet, and you just want to make sure that all of your vinyl is
stuck down as you peel it back. Now we are gonna press this again, but the vinyl does need to be stuck enough to remain on the shirt
for this first press. Once you have everything peeled back, you can just add your second layer. Now this second layer covers the heat transfer
vinyl of our first layer so we don't need to do anything else. We can just go ahead and press
once again for the full time. Then once the press has done
we'll remove the easy press, then once we've removed the easy press we're actually gonna flip
this over to the back. We're gonna press from the
back for about half the time. Then we'll remove our easy
press and we will allow this to cool completely before
removing the carrier sheet. Then once it's cooled completely, we'll just start peeling
back that carrier sheet, making sure everything
is adhered to our shirt. And now our shirt is complete. Again, super easy project and makes an amazing personalized gift. I absolutely love the way
this shirt turned out. I can see all kinds of different
ideas with making your own SVG file from dogs to kids
to like sonogram pictures, even on personalized frames. Just about any picture can
be made into an SVG file just with a few steps,
just like we showed you. So I hope you enjoyed
these two projects as well as the instructions for
making your own SVG file. If you have any questions about anything we've covered today please drop below and ask
those in the comments section. If you love this project, you might want to give us a thumbs up. You can also head on over
to our YouTube channel, hit that subscribe button, because we would love to
have you as a subscriber. We have videos like this every week. Now, if you're wondering where to get any of the supplies for any
of the projects we made today, the answer is Michaels. Pick up your Cricut machine
as well as your easy press and the supplies to make
both of the projects plus so much more. Now that you know how
to make your own SVG, the sky's kind of the limit. So head to Michaels, look for all those surfaces
to put those files on and just sort of let your
imagination run wild. So thank you so much for joining me and I'll see you next week. Bye bye.
