Writing Style Fonts For Cricut Explore

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was a late adopter to the Cricut world because I thought it was just for paper crafts like scrapbooking… and while I love the finished projects I've seen, I definitely don't have the patience for that kind of craft. As a result, I haven't done much with pens since I purchased my Cricut Explore Air II. I have a few gift-giving events coming up soon, though, and – since it's almost unavoidable these days! – have already started thinking about Christmas gifts… so I decided it was time to see how my Cricut could help me with cards and gift tags.

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I have to say, I was very disappointed when I filtered for writing fonts in Design Space and found that all of the fonts were $4.99 and up! I let my Cricut Access subscription lapse, but rather than renew (since I'm on a very tight budget!), I decided it was a good opportunity to do some research!

Why you need special fonts

In order to use pens with your Cricut machine, you (currently) need to change the setting to 'draw'. When you change the setting from cut to draw, Design Space looks at the vector lines. So on most fonts, even if they're 'single cut' fonts, Cricut will draw the outline of the font. That looks very cool with some fonts and projects, and I'll include a few of those in the list of free fonts to use for writing.

A 'writing' font, on the other hand, will have a single line, rather than an outline. Here's one example of a writing font with the setting on 'draw':

The font above is called 'A Child's Year' and costs $4.99 on Cricut Design Space. When set to cut instead of draw, it looks much different:

If you look again at the first two photos, you can see that the single layer font is available in Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic. The writing font, however, is available in Writing and Writing Italic, in addition to the other four styles, which allows you to convert the font into a single line, rather than a single cut, or outline.

So what are your options?

With some fonts, the outline is very thin, so when converted to a line drawing, the pen width fills in the white space, or it leaves such a small space it's not really noticeable. With trial and error, I'm sure you can find many free fonts that are suitable for drawing. I list 15 (13 free) that I believe are good choices below.

With some designs, an outline font isn't a bad thing… in fact, sometimes fonts are specifically designed with an outline, such as Roadside, a "vintage slab serif" font available at Creative Market. (It's no longer free, unfortunately.)

Sometimes the font is intended as a solid line, but the design's purpose makes an outline appropriate. The example that comes to my mind is a coloring page. You can create a variety of shapes and designs in a vector program such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, then add words using a thick system font. Open the drawing in Cricut Design Space and change 'cut' to 'draw', and, voila – you have a coloring page!

Click on the image for a free download of the coloring page. Cricut tip: save the png file as a cut file rather than a print then cut – the lines will be crisper. Once you add it to your canvas, change 'cut' to 'draw'.

My Research

In order to come up with a substantial list of free fonts, I tried a LOT of fonts! Please note that the fonts I settled on are free as of this writing. If you love them, download them now, because they won't all stay free indefinitely.

Because of the way Design Space converts lines to determine how it will draw, I tried to find thin fonts, or fonts with fewer nodes. I also looked at fonts that were intended to be outlined, or ones with design elements that I thought would convert well. Here's one of several canvases during my research:

The Process

Writing with your Cricut follows the same process as cutting with your Cricut, so I'm not going to completely break that down here (this is already WAY longer than I intended!) If you're not sure how to install the pens you can find a full Cricut tutorial here. I use Cricut pens – don't want to deal with making other brands work, and I believe it voids the Cricut warranty… plus, I've found amazing deals on the Cricut pens! Amazon currently has a promotion for the 30 pen set for only $20.45, with free Prime shipping. That's 68¢ per pen!

The basics are this:

On the Design Space Canvas, press 'make it'
Move things around on the screen, if necessary, for optimal placement
Load the mat and pen and select the appropriate settings
Press the Cricut symbol to start the machine

It does take a while to write, so be patient.

I used a striped light cardstock to test my fonts, because I didn't want to load multiple sheets of copy paper and it was all I had in a 12×12. It makes the words a bit hard to see, but hopefully not too hard! Here's a quick video showing the start of the project:

FREE Fonts that work for writing

The verdict is in! I printed examples of 15 fonts – 13 free and 2 paid, as of this writing. Of those 15, here are my findings:

Best for writing single lines:

Writing is Hard – this is hands down the closest thing to hand writing!
Lily pen – this is a script font, so you may want to ungroup the letters to adjust spacing. The downstroke of the p was the only part that showed a slight gap in my experiment.
Beauty – this is also a script font, and Design Space puts way too much space between the letters. It wrote beautifully though, so ungroup and adjust spacing and you'll have a nice handwritten option.
Dream of Spring – ditto #3. It's actually a very similar font to Beauty.
Mellow Line – this script font shows a very slight gap through all the letters. I think it would be less obvious if I'd sized the letters smaller.
Tall Films – I love this Rae Dunn style font! As with Mellow Line, there was a slight gap that would likely be minimized if the letters were smaller.
Brolly Fight – this was a free font of the week a while back, and I'm glad I downloaded it! It's currently $14, but keep an eye out – it may go on sale. (I think it's worth the price!)
Hit Man – Hit Man looks very similar to Brolly Fight… and it's currently free!

Outline style works well:

Danken Stripes – I will definitely be using this font! I LOVE it for writing, but would never use it for cutting – it would be a nightmare to weed!
Roadside – this is the outline font I suggested above, available at Creative Market for $15.
True Mama Bold – this is another interesting font. The regular font just prints as an outline, but the bold version adds some cool effects.
Playlines – this font and the 'Line' version are technically one font – they both come in the same zip file download. This version prints as an outline, but because it's a block letter, I like the look.
Playlines Line – I was hoping this one would draw as a single line, but it doesn't. It's not just an outline, though – it has thick and thin lines, so definitely a unique look.
Simmer Down – this is another font that's intended to have an outline. It works well as a pen font.
Montclar – this one is kind of Tall Films with an outline. I almost excluded it, but I like it!

Lessons Learned

As always, there were lessons learned the hard way with this research! Here are a few tips so that you don't make the same mistakes:

Use a light grip (blue) mat!! Especially if you're using copy paper! Yep, I used copy paper on my standard grip mat. I'm still trying to scrape it off. Oops.
Cardstock lifts off of the light grip mat easily, but it does curl. Keep that in mind as you're designing and planning your projects.
Install your font before you open Design Space. If you forget (points to self), close Design Space, install your font, and reopen Design Space. You don't have to reboot or clear your cache, just close the window or tab.
Remove and cap your pen as soon as you're finished. This post took several days to complete (I did a lot of experimenting!) and with the last print job the pen started out way too light. (See the first two letters of Danken Stripe on the image above.) Fortunately it re-juiced itself. (Is that a word? LOL!)
Make sure your Cricut is set to paper, light cardstock or cardstock, depending on what you're using. Fortunately I did remember to do that!
Try to keep your words fairly small. Fonts with narrow outlines will look like a single line if the letters are small enough.
Experiment! Whenever you use text on Design Space, try it with the Draw setting to see what it looks like. I'm sure there are a lot more free fonts available. Let me know which ones you find!

Happy Crafting!

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