DIY State Art

Customized state wall art is the perfect DIY decor project for your own home or as a welcoming gift for a house warming.

For a good five years or so, we had so many weddings to attend every year I had to set aside a special budget for wedding gifts. I know I’m not alone in this because I got the idea from a friend.

Customized gifts are so expensive these days. I can understand why that is given how much time and effort it takes to make each piece.

I arrived at DIY state arts of my go to gift because it is relatively simple to make and can be easily customized to create many different looks.

I made all my DIY art projects using my Cricut cutting machine but depending on what materials you are using, it can also be done by hand.

The rest of this tutorial is about how you have to easily turn any graphic or drawing into SVG cutout format designs for your cutting machine. Using this method, the world is the limit when it comes to making customized wall art.

If you are interested in a Cricut cutting machine but don’t have one, I have a separate article comparing various machines and a few recommendations on what accessories to get.

How to turn a state silhouette into an SVG

This actually works for any silhouette that you might want to create an SVG format cutout template design but I will demonstrate with states. Try this with any city, or graphic for that matter.

First, find an image online of the graphic you want to cutout. I find Wikipedia to be a great source of creative commons images. For example, here is their page on California.

If you click on the image associated with the page, you get a full screen shot of the image.

At this point, you can either save the image to somewhere on your computer or just copy it onto your clipboard, or even just take a screenshot (Ctrl+ Print Screen).

I then use a tool called Vector Magic. Using Vector Magic, I simply upload the image and it automatically vectorizes the whole image. I usually just don’t even bother downloading the image, I just take a screenshot and then paste it into the Vector Magic browser (Ctrl+V).

In about 3 clicks, I have turned an image into an SVG.

I also want to add a little doodle and hand written “home sweet home” lettering to this project so I can just take a picture of my doodle with my phone and upload it to Vector Magic and have the rest of my graphics I want to use for my project converted into SVGs.

After I’ve downloaded my SVG files from Vector Magic, I then upload it to Cricut Design Space and rearrange them to fit the project.

Here are a few ideas of what you can do for your own DIY State Art project:

There are lots of different printables and cutting craft art you can do with your state silhouette SVG. Here are a few ideas:

Watercolor State Art

Everyone loves watercolors but unless you have the skills, it can be a difficult medium to work with as a novice.

You can instead make printables with watercolor background thought like this one. I have a separate tutorial on how to make watercolor cutouts in Cricut Designs Space.

DIY Wood State Signs

Before you bypass this idea, let me tell you it is as easy as cutting paper. I actually used a wood veneer for this which is way easier to cut than actual wood sheets. If you are using a Cricut cutting machine, this can even be done with a Cricut Explorer. Here is a tutorial on how to cut wood veneer sheets with the Cricut.

Vinyl Decals State Art

Customized t-shirts, mugs and tumblers are always in demand. You can simply just cut your state silhouette out in vinyl or HTV and customize your mug or shirt with a few words or graphics.