Free penguin SVG files

How the face stays in one piece

A penguin is black with a white front, and the white is what you cut away. The trouble is the face: a beak and two eyes sitting in the middle of a white patch would be three loose bits. Here the face is a heart-shaped window, the beak is a kite that hangs from the peak at the top of the heart, and each pupil overlaps the rim of the heart above it. All three stay joined to the head, and the penguin lifts off the mat as one piece.

Every file is 100 mm on its longer side. On the standing penguin the narrowest part is the band of black between the face and the belly, about 2.5 mm at that size, so it cuts well in vinyl down to 50 mm and in card down to about 70 mm. The mandala penguin and the penguin family have finer parts: keep those at 100 mm or more.

Black, white and a little orange

Cut a one-colour penguin from black and put white behind it: the face and belly show white and the beak and eyes stay black. For an orange beak and feet use the layered penguin, which has them as a third colour. Penguins are a winter subject as much as a Christmas one, so they keep a classroom wall or a set of cards going from December to February.

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