Crafters Font Guide for Beginners
Have you ever spent hours and hours searching for the perfect font to use in your next project? Don’t worry, you’re not alone!
There are literally thousands of fonts out there in the universe, some free, some that have to be bought, and then there is Canva… A graphic design app that’s easy to use & has loads of fonts.
To make it super easy for anyone to start crafting with fonts, we thought we’d use Canva as the main example in this article and showcase all the awesome fonts that you can get on this app. No downloading or installing is needed!
Plus we’ve added a bunch of extra easy-to-understand tips on how to work with fonts to level up your craft projects.
Watch our Beginners Guide to Fonts & Styles for Cricut for detailed step-by-step instructions you can easily follow.
NOTE: If you’re loving fonts and want to completely geek out on what all the jargon means, feel free to check out this Comprehensive Typography Guide for Crafters.
10 Tips on Using Fonts for Cricut Crafting
Tip 1: How to pick a good font?
When you pick a font to use on a design, you’ll need to think about what it is going to be used for. Should it have a feminine or masculine feel? Serious or whimsical? It can get so confusing!
If you just want to find a nice-looking script font, then you’re going to love our favorite 12 Script Fonts that you can find in our Canva template.
This list will give you a wide range of styles to suit all kinds of craft projects.
You’ll find a bunch of different styles from modern to traditional and a few fun and quirky ones thrown in for good measure.
Tip 2: Add space around your design
When designing your crafts, it’s really important that you allow your design, which usually involves lettering, to have enough space around the edges. This is called padding or breathing room.
This means that you need to size out your design BEFORE you cut it, so you don’t end up with something that doesn’t fit properly. Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us.
Bad Use of Spacing & Lettering:
You can see that the lack of spacing makes this sign looks cluttered.
Good Use of Spacing & Lettering:
Simply making the text smaller, and adding more line spacing between the names, makes the sign much easier to read.
Tip 3: Add Some Fun Designs To Your Text
Crafters love love love glyphs. And rightly so. They can add a fun touch to your crafts and are particularly useful on romantic signs that have lots of swooshes and hearts.
Unfortunately, you can’t easily find these on the fonts in Canva, but if you google Glyphs & Cricut you’ll find a bunch of great resources that will work in Cricut Design Space.
However, in Canva you can create a similar look easily using designs from the Elements section. Just search for things like splashes, scribbles, arrows, and hearts, like the design below. In fact, you’ll probably find using this method will give you an even better finish than trying to use the glyphs that are only available in some fonts.
Tip 4: Create a Border Around Your Text (Offset)
If you want to use multiple layers or to cut a name out of a pattern you may want to use the Offset feature in Design Space. You can watch our Offset Tutorial here. This is an easy trick that every crafter loves to use.
Tip 5: Font Combinations
When working with text, you’ll most likely want to use all of your favorite fonts. DON’T!
It’s best to limit your design to only 2 fonts–maybe 3, tops! The reason being is that it can get really busy and distract from what you’re trying to achieve.
Usually, script fonts and plainer fonts like a Serif (e.g. Times New Roman) or Sans Serif (e.g. Helvetica) work well together as they give a good contrast, like in the example above, which actually only uses 2 fonts.
You can find a bunch of our favorite font combinations here.
Tip 6: Watch Out for Fonts That Are Tricky To Cut
Fonts that are super skinny or that have texture can be hard to cut out of vinyl.
The texture on fonts like the one below will make it much harder to weed (peel out) as there will be lots of extra bits in the letters and around the edges.
It’s ok when you’re doing large projects, but we wouldn’t recommend using it for small text.
Fonts that have parts that get cut out like the one below look fun, but they’ll cause you a whole lot of extra work! You’ll be peeling out until midnight if you use a lot of this font.
Fonts that have wide and skinny parts like the one below can also be tricky. Don’t use them in small font sizes as those skinny parts can easily get caught in your Cricut cutter and rip when you weed or peel them.
Tip 7: Avoid Using UPPERCASE with Script Fonts
Usually, uppercase (all capital letters) lettering should only be used for titles or to really highlight something in your text. If you really want to do some crafts using UPPERCASE use fonts that are still easy to read.
In the examples below, you can see the 2 on the left are still quite legible, however, the two on the right are very difficult to read.
Tip 8: Working with Lots of Names
If you’re creating crafts that have lots of names, like wedding invitations or pantry labels, you’ll want to write out all of the names you want. You’ll notice that there will most likely be a big difference in sizing depending on the font that you choose.
You’ll need to watch out for ascenders which are the bits of the letters that go up high (blue section) and the descenders are the bits that drop down (peach part).
In the above example, this font is very tall so it’s great to work with for individual names but not so good for projects that need to have lots of names in a similar size.
In the above example, you’ll see that the parts of the letters that drop down are a lot smaller, so this kind of font will have a more consistent size than the other example. It’s great to use for pantry labels or wedding invitations.
Tip 9: Working with Multiple Lines of Text
If you’re working on crafts like invitations or signs that have a lot of lines of text, you’ll want to watch out for a thing called Line Spacing.
This allows you to control the amount of space between the lines. Usually going with the Auto option works well, but depending on your design you might want to make it smaller or larger.
Tip 10: Preparing Your Text for Cutting on Your Cricut
Before you cut your beautiful design, you will need to WELD the fonts so that any overlapping pieces get merged together. See the example below which shows how each letter is still individual parts. Highlight the entire word and click WELD to join them together.
This will allow your Cricut to cut around the edges and NOT through the joining parts, like in the example below.
We hope this has helped you understand how you can use Fonts in Canva and how to cut them in Cricut.
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Head over to Bright Star Crafters Facebook Group or Subscribe to our Youtube Channel to find video tutorials for more tips on how to design beautiful crafts.
You can find out more about fonts and typography in the following articles:
Comprehensive Typography Guide for Crafters
