Setting up Animal Notepads in Cricut Design Space

Learn how to set up my animal notepad SVG cut files in Cricut Design Space with this handy step-by-step guide! This tutorial is also helpful for setting up my other cut files that include score lines.

Setting up the Animal Notepads in Cricut Design Space

Hi Crafty Friends! Making animal notepads is one of my favorite paper crafting projects! They make such sweet and unexpected gifts for birthdays, holidays or just because. I have made six animal notepads so far including a fox, penguin, sloth, owl, panda and cat. The first three are available on my blog to download for free and the latter three are available in my Etsy shop. The notepads in my shop already come with a guide for setting up the files in Design Space along with an ad-free picture tutorial.

Collage of animal notepads including an owl, sloth, penguin, fox, panda and cat notepad.

Animal Notepads

Owl and Cat paper crafted notepads

Below is a guide you can use for setting up the first three notepads in Design Space. 

Score Lines

If you plan to score the notepads by hand, you MUST delete the score layers from the cut file. They will show up in the SVG as bright pink cut lines. There are seven total and they are on the three large pieces that wrap around the notepad. If you do not change them to “score”, or delete them, they will cut up your project.

Purple paper scored using a scoring board and stylus.

How to Set Up Files in Design Space

Download the SVG cut file and save it to your desktop. Open Cricut Design Space and start a new project. Choose “Upload” and upload the SVG cut file, then add it to your canvas. Select the entire image and click “Ungroup”.

Cricut Design Space tutorial showing where to Attach the groups

If you are using the SVG cut files that include score lines, you will need to tell Cricut that these lines should be scored not cut. Highlight the score lines, there are 7 total, and change them to “Score” under “Operations”.

Cricut Design Space Tutorial showing where the operations drop down menu is.

The lines will change from solid pink lines to dashed lines. Under the Layers panel they will also change from “Basic Cut” to “score”.

Design Space Tutorial showing scores lines are now dashed.

Next attach the score lines to the box pieces. If you skip this step, Cricut will place the score lines on their own mat. To attach them, select the group and click “Attach” in the bottom right. The group will move to the top and show “Attach”.

Design Space tutorial showing where to attach the groups.

Cricut Design Space tutorial showing the groups of attached files.

The score lines are now attached to the notepad and ready to be cut! If the cut file has light gray pieces in it, they most likely need to be changed to white. You can do this by selecting the pieces all at once using the shift key, then changing the color under the color picker next to Operations.

Design Space tutorial showing where the color picker is to change the piece colors.

Double check, when you go to cut, that the mats show dashed lines on the correct pieces. Insert your scoring tool if your machine has that capability, and you are ready to cut! 

Cricut Mats with pieces on them.

I hope this guide is useful! These notepads are so much fun to make and a great craft for your cutting machine. 

Happy Crafting! -Kim