Spiral Photo Design with Silhouette

This past week these spiral design have become so popular.
In a few basic steps let’s take a look at how you can create one.

Spiral Photos with Silhouette

Open Spiralbetty.com
You could do it from any device that you can access the internet and your photos.

Upload your photo by clicking on “Upload photo”.

Then adjust the settings until you get the look you want.
If you want to turn this into a cut file, black is going to be the best option.

Next, you can adjust additional settings to get the look you want.
Adjust the scale to zoom in on your photo.
Adjust the rings to make more or less in the design.

Each photo may vary in what is needed or what will work or look good.
Just play around with the settings and try different things.

When you have it how you want, click the download button.

Personal use is free but there is an option to “Buy Betty a Coffee”. This is a great option to thank the creator for use of their site and helps with the costs that come with keeping a site up and running.

If you plan to use the photo for commercial reasons in business or selling, then you’ll want to buy the commercial use license.

I chose the Commercial Use option since I’m writing a blog post on it, paid through Paypal and I had the Royalty free license for this image.

If you are a new user and are not sure about Personal Use versus Commercial Use – check out this post by Cutting for Business on the differences.
Understanding Licenses for Cutting Files, Designs, and Fonts

Once the file is downloaded – Open it in the Silhouette Software.
If you did do this on your mobile device or Ipad, then you will need to transfer the file to your computer for accessing it.

The image may open up large. I work with it at the size that it comes in as.
Grab the photo and move it off to the left side of the cutting mat. Zoom out if needed.

Open the Trace Panel.
Click on Select Trace Area.
Draw a box around the entire design.

You want as solid yellow lines as possible. Since it is black, it should trace the best.
Increase the Threshold if needed to see if you can get the smoothest yellow lines possible.
This is going to vary by each design and photo traced and there is no “magic” number.
I increased mine to about 82% and then clicked the Trace button

Once the Trace is completed you will see red lines appear on your image.
These are the trace lines and are now “cut” lines.

Now here is the trick. Let’s see how this “trace” is going to look as a cut.

Grab the red cut lines and pull it to the right side of the cutting mat.

It doesn’t look like anything except a bunch of red lines. If you squint really hard at your design, you might be able to make out some shapes in it.

Click on the design to select it, then choose the Fill Color Panel and choose black.

Now we can see this take shape.
But, it’s still a bit distracting with those red lines.

Choose the Line Style Panel on the right side and then the 2nd tab at the top.
Change the Line Color to black.
Now we know what it will look like cut out of black material.

Scale the design down to the size you need and you are ready to cut. I grabbed the corner bounding box and scaled the design down to fit on my cutting mat.

Save the file.

I have seen these cut from both adhesive vinyl and heat transfer vinyl.
I used Siser Easyweed Heat Transfer Vinyl to cut my design.
For tips on cutting HTV – check out this post
Beginner HTV Tips and Tricks

Keep in mind that this is a pretty detailed cut, so it may take awhile to finish the cut.
I would highly recommend doing a test cut either with the test cut feature in the software or type out a capital B to use as the test cut and send that before you send this full design to cut.
Test cuts can save you time, material, and headache.

Once you know the cut settings will work, send the design to cut.

Then take your time weeding the design. Here is a time lapse video of weeding my design out of HTV.

What it looked like after weeding the design.

I then pressed my HTV onto a white 12″ x 12″ canvas and my daughter loved this photo of her cat.
I used my heat press and have had a piece of wood cut to fit in the backside of the canvas frame to give it the solid surface underneath for pressing.

I do think that these look better from a distance. My eyes tend to focus more on the spiral effect when it’s up close. But the farther back I get from the image, I can focus more on the photo image of it.
Quite the optical illusion.

It is really neat how it creates the image out of the different sizes of rings.

Try it – have fun!
Use the Fill Color and Line Color Panels to see how it will turn out before you cut it!

We love seeing what you are creating with your Silhouette machines or software.
Feel free to post photos or questions on my Facebook group at
Silhouette Secrets with EllyMae.

Save this for future reference by pinning the image below.