Updated on October 4, 2022
How to Use Templates in Cricut Design Space. Templates help you visualize and size your design to fit perfectly on your final project piece. Step-by-step tutorial on how to use templates plus a video.
Welcome to the first tutorial on Cricut Design Space Basics. Today I’m going to show you how to use the templates tool in Cricut Design Space. The templates tool can be used to help you visualize and size your final project. This can be helpful to be sure your design is not too big or too small for the final project piece.

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How to Use Templates in Cricut Design Space
Open Cricut Design Space and click on New Project. First, you’re going to want to click on the templates tool in the design panel.
This will open the templates window. Now, you can scroll through all the different templates, you can choose a category to filter the templates, or use the search bar to find a specific template.

The template that I use most often is t-shirts. I use this to be sure that my iron-on designs will fit on the particular shirt that I’m creating. I can create one design and make matching shirts for my daughter and me just by resizing the design to fit the correct templates.
To find all the shirt templates type the word shirt into the search box, then choose the shirt that looks most like the one that you’re working with.

For this example, I am going to choose a scoop neck tee. Once you select your template you will see that an alert pops up that the template will not be saved with your project. You will have to add the template each time you open your design in Design Space.
Now you can select the type and the size from the drop-down menus at the top.

Some templates have a custom option for you to add in the size manually. I will choose a women’s short sleeve shirt in a size large. For the shirts template, you can create designs for both the front and back of the t-shirt.

Change the Color of the Template
To change the color of your template, select the color swatch where next to your template name at the bottom of the layers panel.

From here you can choose one of the current project colors, a color from the basic color palette, or you can select or type in any hex color code at the bottom. I have a grey t-shirt, so I will choose grey from the basic color palette.
Now you are ready to add images or text to your shirt. Click on the images tool in the design panel. Let’s create a shirt about our love for coffee. Type in the word coffee in the search bar. I am going to choose these two images and add them to my design.

Since these would be way too small to fit on my shirt, I can resize them to fit by dragging them over to the shirt and adjusting them with the arrows in the right corner of each design.

If you decide you no longer want your template or you want to change it you can delete the current one by clicking on the template in the layers panel and then the delete button.
Change the Color of the Blank Canvas
Another feature to help you visualize your final project when designing is the blank canvas layer. The default is white, but you can change the color to whatever you like. Simply click the color swatch next to where it says blank canvas on the layers panel.

If you want it to be white again, simply click on the blank canvas in the layers panel and then click Delete.

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