Free handprint SVG files

A print and a solid hand are different things

Press a painted hand on paper and you do not get the outline of a hand. You get six marks: the palm, with a pale hollow in the middle where the skin does not touch, and five fingers that stop short of it. The handprint with separate fingers and the pair are drawn like that, which looks right but means six loose pieces a hand. Use them in vinyl, where transfer tape keeps the pieces in place.

Everything else in the set uses the same hand welded into a single solid shape, so it can be cut from card, felt or wood and picked up in one go. The fingers are 8 to 10 mm wide when the hand is 100 mm tall, with nothing finer than the drips of the bloody handprint, which thin to about 3 mm at 100 mm. Those are the parts to weed last.

Halloween windows and family keepsakes

For a window at Halloween, cut the bloody handprints from red vinyl at life size, about 180 mm tall, and stick several at different heights and angles, as if someone had tried to get out. For a keepsake, the layered family handprints give one hand per person: scale each layer to the real length of that hand, from the wrist crease to the tip of the middle finger, before you cut.

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