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Holidays and seasons

Free Día de los Muertos SVG files

Free Día de los Muertos SVG files for 1 and 2 November: a pair of sugar skulls, a skull with a blank brow for a name, La Catrina, a sugar skull cat, a mask to wear, the marigold, a papel picado banner, an altar, the bread of the dead, candles and a marigold wreath.

13 designs. Free for personal and commercial use, no sign-up. What you can do with them.

Or choose one below for its PNG, DXF and cutting sizes.

What belongs on the altar

The Day of the Dead is kept in Mexico on 1 and 2 November, when families welcome back those who have died. They build an ofrenda, an altar, at home or at the grave, and each thing on it has a job. Marigolds, called cempasúchil, mark the way with their colour and scent. Candles light it. Papel picado, tissue paper cut into pictures, moves in the slightest air. Pan de muerto is a sweet loaf with bones of dough across the top, and a sugar skull often carries a name written across its brow in icing. La Catrina, the skeleton lady in a grand hat, comes from an engraving by José Guadalupe Posada made in the early 1910s.

It is a day of remembrance and welcome, not a second Halloween, so the skulls here smile and are covered in flowers.

Cutting flowers, petals and teeth

On the skulls every decoration is a hole: the eyes, the petals round them, the nose, the teeth and the flower on the brow. The smallest holes are the petals, about 3 mm wide when a skull is 88 mm tall, and the walls between the teeth are about 2 mm. In vinyl a single skull weeds well from 90 mm tall, and the pair, where each skull is smaller, from 160 mm wide. For card, back the holes with bright tissue so the colour shows through. The papel picado banner is drawn for paper: cut it 250 mm wide or more from tissue or thin card and the struts are over 5 mm.

How to open the files

  • Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
  • Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
  • LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
  • Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
  • Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions

How do I put a name on the sugar skull?

Use the skull with the plain brow. The space between the two rules is 39 mm wide and 18 mm tall when the skull is 100 mm tall, so scale the skull until a short name fits, then cut the name from a second colour and lay it on, or cut it through the skull if its letters have no closed parts.

What size should I cut the mask?

Measure between the centres of the eyes of the person who will wear it. The mask has 42 mm between its eye centres at 100 mm wide, so 150 mm wide gives about 63 mm, which fits most adults, and 125 mm gives about 53 mm for a child. Cut it from card or craft foam and thread elastic through the side holes.

Which colours are traditional?

Orange and yellow for the marigolds, with bright pink, purple, turquoise and white for paper and sugar. The layered skull uses cream, black, marigold orange and pink. Single-colour skulls are usually cut in white or black and set on a bright ground.

More free SVG files