Import a Dreaming Tree SVG into Design Space

Almost immediately after receiving my first Cricut machine, I found a love for paper crafting. It is just amazing what you can construct using only paper and adhesive. As my obsession grew, I searched for places to purchase my paper SVG files since I still was not able to create my own. I landed on one of my favorite SVG paper creators of all time- Dreaming Tree! Not only is Dreaming Tree a great place to find files, it also has the best customer service and employees ever! Leo is the founder and he does a tutorial for each SVG he offers. He has a great, calm voice and is very thorough. If you have not been to his site and would like to get a feel for paper craft, follow this link to the FREE files to get you started.

https://shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=1650550&u=2901434&m=102697&urllink=&afftrack=

After finding the files that you want to use, you need to figure out how to add them to design space and prepare them to cut. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to find your file, unzip your file, upload your files into Design Space and Prepare your file to cut.

Here is the video tutorial, but you can also keep scrolling for a written tutorial with pictures.

Navigate the Dreaming Tree site

The Dreaming Tree website is pretty easy to navigate. I recommend making an account to make it easier to track the designs that you have purchased or downloaded for free. The Dreaming Tree team makes it very simple for you to re-download if you have purchased something, but have misplaced the file.

First, pull up the Dreaming Tree website (www.3dsvg.com) and shop for your design. I won’t go over the check out process in this tutorial, but if you have any problems, the Dreaming Tree team can help you with all of that.

I have created an account with Dreaming Tree. After I made my purchase (in this case, its a FREE “purchase”!), I can find my download, listed alphabetically in my account, under Downloadable Products.

Find the product that you would like to download and click the download button on the right.

After you download your file, you will need to unzip it. Unzipping a file is different for many computers so I’m not going to put the steps in the tutorial. After my computer unzips the file, it puts the extracted file into the Downloads folder. That is where I am going to retrieve it. You can also search for the name of the file and that should direct you to the right spot.

Once you locate the file, you will see that Dreaming Tree includes a few different items. It will include a folder titled SVG. This folder will have all of the elements that you will need to upload into your Design Space. It may also include a second folder inside of it titled Extras. There are different things that could be housed in this folder, such as the project with solid lines, or different printables, so I recommend always taking a look at what is in it.

Another thing included in the main folder is a jpg of what the project looked like when Dreaming Tree made it. I like to include this photo in my project as a reference when making my own. I will go into detail about this later.

Another thing that is included in the main folder is a PDF of the project. It shows the finished product, lists any materials that you may need and sometimes shows some assembly steps if further detail is needed. The PDF is great to print out and keep in a binder with all of your Dreaming Tree Project PDF’s.

Upload the files into Design Space

Since there are many pieces to an SVG, there is a little more work involved than just uploading one file. To upload the SVG, follow these steps.

Click the Upload tab on the bottom left of your canvas

Choose Upload. Select Upload Image. Then Browse.

Find the folder in your computer files. Then click on the SVG folder and chose your first SVG file. Open on the bottom right of your window.

When the file comes in, it will be on a checkered background, which means that area is empty. You can change the image name on the right of your screen, but otherwise this is ready to import. Click the green Upload button on the bottom right.

You will want to continue the above process over and over until you have uploaded all of the pieces that are in the SVG folder.

Next, I like to upload the jpg image of the finished product. This will not cut and we will have to shut off that layer when we are about to cut, but I like to have this image on my canvas so I can use it as a reference photo when I am choosing colors for the project. It puts everything in one place for me so I do not have to keep clicking out of Design Space to look at the image.

You can upload it using the same steps. Upload, browse, find the image and Open.

This time when you open the file, it recognizes that the file has a background and gives you the option to clean up the file. We can go through the motions by choosing complex.

Since we are just using it for a reference photo, we do not want to do anything to this file so we can just continue.

It now wants to know if we want a cut file or a Print then Cut. We can choose Print then Cut and continue.

We will not be back at our Upload screen. You will want to select all of the pieces that we just uploaded by clicking on them. As you click on them, they will have a highlight rectangle around the image. Once you click on them all, you can add to canvas.

Prepare the files to cut

Once you inserted all of the images onto the canvas, there are a few things that we need to do to prepare them to cut correctly.

When Design Space uploaded the images, they came in grouped, but not attached. So if we were to cut right now, the lines that are supposed to be score lines would end up being cut lines and not attached to anything.

This is what it would look like if you cut now.

This is how it looks on your canvas. Notice that the “Main_melon” group has two separate layers (non attached) and the line layer is set as Basic Cut.

We need to change this. First, we need to change the cut line into a score line. You can do this by selecting the layer that has the lines on it. Then change the operation at the top of your canvas from Basic cut into Score.

Then we need to select the paper layer and line layer and attach them.

The rest of the layers are ready to cut!

Save your project

Of course, you will want to save your project. With SVGs that I purchase from other sites, I like to organize the way I save them. First, I do the initial save as the project name that Dreaming Tree has named it. This one is named Ghost Treat Tote.

Then I go back into my projects and find the project that I just saved.

Once I hover over it, I choose to “Edit Project Details”

When the dialog box comes up, I add the jpg image that Dreaming Tree provided in the folder of downloads.

I also like to put a description that includes the site that I got the image and the Kit that the image comes from.

Once saved, you can see that the images shows up nicely in “My Projects”

I hope that this has helped you to upload and prepare your files purchased from another site. Dreaming Tree is one of the best for paper craft and I would love to hear if you give them a try!