Free flame SVG files

How the inner flame stays in

A flame drawn in one colour needs something inside it to look hot. Here the larger fires have a smaller flame cut out of them, and a core left standing inside that. The core is joined to the outer flame at the foot, so it does not drop out when you cut, and the cut-out is a horseshoe of clear space, never a closed ring. The walls between the shapes are 4 mm or more at 100 mm tall, so the fires hold together in card and thin wood as well as vinyl.

Tips of flames are sharp points. In vinyl, weed away from the tips, towards the foot, and they stay down; on a laser, expect the very ends to char a little, which suits the subject.

Colour and heat

Real fire is palest where it is hottest, so the centre should be the lightest colour: yellow inside orange inside red, as in the layered flame. For a single-colour cut on a dark shirt or a black mug, orange or gold reads as fire far better than red. Hot rod flames traditionally fade from yellow at the leading edge to red at the tips, which you can copy by cutting the same file in two colours and overlapping them with a slight offset.

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