How to make a Mother’s Day card with Cricut

Posted on April 1, 2021 by Yvonne Simpson

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The first recorded Mother’s Day was first celebrated in 1908 when a lady called Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother in a church in West Virginia America. She first started to campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday in 1905. After much campaigning and effort made by Anna Jarvis and another woman by the name of Julia Ward Howe, by 1911 all of the states in the USA observed the holiday. In 1914 Woodrow Wilson had signed a proclamation to make Mother’s Day a national holiday to honour mothers in the second week of May every year. By the early 1920s companies were starting to sell Mother’s Day cards. Although it is not always called Mother’s Day and not celebrated on the same day in each country lots of money is made on that day with cards and gifts. With this in mind, Mother’s Day cards are a great addition to your business. They can be quick and easy to make and satisfying to know that your own personality can be injected into your cards. I use Creative Fabrica to source my images from. The choice is vast and always of great quality. I highly recommended subscribing to them if you are a small business as it saves you plenty of money and will be invaluable for your personal or business projects, providing the graphics and fonts that you need.

Cricut is also great for making lots of projects including cards. Cricut itself can be a massive learning curve but once you get the hang of using all of the different things it can do it will become your best friend on your card-making and crafting projects. They have lots of templates that you can use so it is great for a beginner or someone who is an old hand at crafting. YouTube is also great for learning tips and tricks, and this was invaluable to me as Cricut does not come with any manuals at all. So, let’s begin on the task at hand. This step-by-step guide will guide you through the card-making process.

I went to Creative Fabrica and found an image set I really liked the look of designed by Commercial Cliparts, and downloaded the images to my pc.

Open up Cricut, go to new project and then go to upload on the left-hand side of the screen.

Then select upload image. As you will see Cricut tells you which file formats it will allow such as png, jpg etc.

Then select browse which will bring up all of your files on your device.

I have a file which is called Cricut Images and this is where I save all of my images for my projects. When you find the image you require select it by double-clicking on it.

I selected the complex option as I would like the best-finished result and there are lots of different colours in the image. Then press continue.

At this point, Cricut gives you the option to erase parts of the image but I do not want to do this so I select continue.

I am saving it as a print and cut image and at this point, you can rename the image and give it tags that helps you find it in the future for your next projects.

Now the image will show up on your uploads panel. If you wanted to, you could do all of your uploading at this point, then click each picture you would like to insert on your project when you get back to this stage. For now, I will just select insert images for this one alone.

The image is now imported into your project.

Then insert a shape with the panel on the left-hand side of the screen and select square. This is a basic cut. You can also change the colour (pink circle).

I want my finished card to be an A6 card so I unlock the padlock on the shape (red square), and put the dimensions of 21cm wide by 14.8cm high, so when the card is finished and folded it will measure 10.5cm by 14.8cm. If you did not unlock the padlock when you put your fist dimension in it would keep the shape as a square and not allow you to make it a rectangle.

To make life easier I then add a score line by selecting the shape option on the left, then select score line.

Holding down ctrl on the keyboard go to the panel on the right-hand side (pink circle) and click the square and score line. This highlights those two elements. Then at the top, you will see the align option (green circle) so choose center. Cricut then puts the line in the centre which gives you a guide on where the centre of the card is making life a little easier when placing the images. Do not forget to attach! (purple circle).

Another option is to go to images on the left-hand side of the screen and select images. Then type in card in the search bar. Scroll down until you find one you like. Then select insert images.

Again, as before unlocking the padlock and resize to your desired dimensions.

Once the template is imported and resized then this is your opportunity to make the card front a different colour. Select the basic cut option on the right-hand side of the screen, then go to the little square (orange circle). This brings up the colour panel. If you do not like the options available then click advanced (green circle) and have a play around until you get the desired colour.

Select the image by clicking on it and go to arrange at the top of the panel, then select send to front. This then brings your image to the top of the card. Also, if you hold the arrow on the bottom of the image (blue circle) you can drag it to whatever size you want it to be.

Now it is time to add text. Select the text option on the left-hand side. Start to type in the text box.

You can choose your desired font. All of your font options are available by clicking fonts (red circle). I then decided to curve the font (pink circle) and chose the print and cut option. (black circle).

Once you are happy with how the card looks it is time to make it. Holding down ctrl select all of the images and the card but leave out the score line. Select flatten. Cricut now knows that this is one layer and will not cut out each element.

Hold down ctrl and select the print and cut layer and the score line, then click attach. Now go to Make it in the top right-hand side.

This screen then shows you exactly what your Cricut is about to do. As you can see it will print the whole image then score a line down the middle, and then it will cut out your shape which you made to the desired size. If everything looks okay at this point which it does, then hit continue.

Now it will find your machine and send it to the printer. When you have printed load your picture onto the mat and let Cricut cut the card out for you. You will need a scoring pen to put in the machine.

Let Cricut do its thing, take it off the mat fold and admire your handy work! Obviously, I have made a very basic card for this tutorial but feel free to let your imagination run wild. Once you get the hang of it you will surprise yourself. Happy crafting.