How to Weld in Cricut

In this blog post, we are going to cover how to weld in Cricut. We will cover how to weld shapes and images. We will also cover how to weld letters on Cricut Explore. I always like to start with the definition of the topic we are covering. 

What does weld do on Cricut?

In Cricut Design Space, welding means combining multiple shapes or images into one solid image. I like to think of welding in Cricut Design Space as smashing objects together, and it is much the same as welding actual objects. Two pieces go from being separate to one without noticing that they were ever two objects. You can also weld or connect letters to make flowing cursive letters or combine shapes to make a completely new shape.

How to weld Cricut:

Now let’s get into the nitty-gritty of actually how to weld on Cricut. In this section, we are going to cover the basics of how to weld simple shapes in Cricut Design Studio. 

Steps for welding shapes:

1. Add a shape that you would like to manipulate.
2. Add a second shape that you would like to use for the manipulation. A good example may be a simple house. First, you would add a square then you would add a triangle.
3. Move the shapes into the positions you want them to be in. For example, the triangle (roof) would go over the top of the square (house).
4. If you left the shape as is with the “cut lines”, it would cut the shapes out as separate shapes according to the cut lines. That’s where the weld function comes in handy.
5. Highlight all of the shapes.
6. Click weld. You will notice the cut lines disappear and a new shape is formed.

There is a great Youtube tutorial on welding that you can check out here. 

How to weld letters on Cricut:

Like I mentioned before, you can weld other things besides shapes in Cricut Design Space. In this section, we are going to cover how to weld letters in Cricut Design Space. Welding comes very much in handy with letters because you can create text that genuinely looks like handwritten cursive.

When choosing cursive writing in a text box in Cricut Design Space, you will notice that the letters are all spaced pretty far apart. They do not look like regular handwritten, flowing, cursive words. With the weld function, you can pull the letters together and create the look you want.

Steps for Welding Letters:

1. Click the text and type the word you want in a handwritten or cursive font.
2. Highlight the word and go to “letter space”.
3. Use the arrows to minimize the space between the letters until you achieve a look that you want. Ideally for cursive, you want the letter to be as close together as possible. You will notice that some letters come together and touch nicely while others still have a gap in-between. We want to fix the gap so that the machine does not cut the word with gaps.
4. Click “advance” and “ungroup to letters”. This will separate each letter so that you can move them around to touch each other.
5. Move the letters around so that they all flow into a single word without any gaps.
6. When you like how the word looks, highlight it and select “weld”. Now your letters have been “welded” together to create one cohesive word.

You may sometimes notice that once letters are welded together, they overlap more than you would like. This is when you would need or want to “unweld” which can be a little tricky since there is technically not an option to unweld. We cover this topic in another blog post here, which you should check out next. I hope this blog post helped you to understand how to weld in Cricut.