DIY Floral Wall Decals Tutorial – Part 1: Creating Cut Files

This is part 1: Creating Cut Files. For Part 2: Cutting The Vinyl & Installation, click HERE.

I have been dreaming about what to put on my daughter’s wall in her new room. I knew I wanted an accent wall, and I was leaning towards florals and pinks, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted paint, wallpaper, or what.

It turned out so good! Here are some sneak peaks…

I got this idea to do DIY vinyl decals as a non permanent and cheap and easy solution. I am so excited to show you EXACTLY how I did it!!!

I made the decals ENTIRELY ON MY PHONE using the Cricut app.

What. I know. Insane!

I am loving the Cricut app right now!! It is surprisingly easy to use and I can get things done while I’m nursing the baby to sleep!

(So far the only thing that bugs be about the app is that I can’t tell if it auto saves…does anyone know?)

I can’t believe the amount of things I can do on my phone these days. It is super cool, and also kind of bad…. my kids probably think I’m playing but I swear I’m being productive!

Hah.

😉

(I even wrote this blog post on my phone….)

Anyways

STEP 1

The first thing you need to do is choose the images you are going to use to cut. I love using freepik.com and that is where I found these peony illustrations.

This post will have a lot of screenshots

NOTE: (if you use a .svg file, the following instructions will not apply. These instructions are what we like to call the hard way, for a raster image.)

Search for “outline” or “stencil” or “illustration” or “hand drawn” to help you find a good line art image of the flower you want to use.

It’s best if the image is black and white, or at least has good contrast and very few colors.

Here are some good ones:

Flower vector created by asmaarzq – www.freepik.com
Flower vector created by pikisuperstar – www.freepik.com

Once you have found the image you want to use, download it or save it to your photos.

Next, open the cricut app and press “upload”. Find your image wherever you saved or downloaded it, and open it up.

Browse for your file or open it from your photo library

STEP 2

You are going to edit one flower, leaf, or element at a time.

Crop the image around one flower, it doesn’t have to be a super tight crop, having some space around it will help the erasing process later.

Crop the image

After it’s cropped, click “done” on the bottom left hand corner.

You are now going to “clean up” your image to isolate the flower’s outline.

Click the “remove” tool and then click the white background, it should disappear.

Remove the background

Then use the erase tool to erase the leaves and stem.

Erase the leaves and stem

You can change the size of the eraser and zoom in close to get any hard areas.

Zoom in if you need to
Zoom in some more

Keep zooming and erasing until you are satisfied.

It has to be perfect 😉

Once your flower has an erased background and looks something like this, you are done.

Background completely removed.

***Don’t erase any of the white inside the flowers petals.***

Press “next” in the top right corner.

On the “refine” page, don’t click anything. Just go to the next page.

Skip this page

You now have the silhouette of your flower. Title it and save it as a “cut image”.

It helps to assign each flower pair (silhouette and outline pair) a number so you know which outlines go to which silhouettes.

Save it as a cut image

STEP 3

For this step, you are going to make the outline layer of your flower.

Repeat all the steps above for the same flower or leaf as before, but instead of stopping when you have a silhouette, you will continue to use the “remove” tool to click the white areas INSIDE the flowers petals.

Remove the whites inside the petals

Use the little screen in the top right corner to preview what your cut file is looking like.

If there are any large black areas, keep removing white sections until it looks the way you want. It’s okay to leave some little ones.

Keep and eye on the preview screen

This part takes a little longer. Keep working until it looks like a stencil.

It should look like a stencil when you’re done.

When you are satisfied, click “next” again and title and save it as a cut image.

Title it and save as cut image

STEP 4

Now let’s bring your finished shapes to the canvas and see how they look!

Press the upload button again, but this time choose the “open uploaded images” option.

Select both flower layers you just made, The silhouette and the outlines, and insert them to the canvas.

Insert the silhouette and outline files you just made into your canvas

They will both be black at first, so to see how they look you should re color them.

Select the silhouette layer, then click the “edit” button at the bottom of the screen. Click “cut” to choose a new color.

Recolor the layers

Repeat these steps to change the color of the outlines layer too.

You can now place the outlined flower on top of the silhouette to see how it looks, and play around with positioning it.

Place the outline layer on top of the silhouette layer.

What I like to do is make the Outline layer a little larger than the Silhouette layer, and then rotate it slightly so that its a little misaligned. It gives it a nice dimensional look.

Rotate and change the size to give it some dimension

That’s it!! Keep repeating these steps for each flower or leaf you want to cut!

Repeat these steps for each element

Once you have all your cut files, you’re ready to cut the vinyl.

That’s it for part 1, stay tuned for part 2 where I explain how I cut, weed, and apply the vinyl decals!

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Do you have any questions? I’m happy to help.

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