A dove climbs with both wings thrown wide, a swallow glides on long pointed wings, a hummingbird holds itself still in the air with its beak aimed forward, and a small songbird stands on the ground with its tail raised toward the sky. These free dove, swallow, hummingbird and songbird SVG files give you each bird as a two-layer cut file for Cricut and other craft machines. Because every file is also a scalable vector image, the same birds can become part of your vector design projects as well.
I colored the birds with two shades taken from the sky. The base silhouette is a deep petrol blue, the color the sky takes on high above the clouds, and the top pieces are a light turquoise that rests on the feathers like light. Even the eye of each bird is a separate turquoise piece. When you build a bird from paper, that small bright point is the last thing you glue in place, and at that moment the bird finally seems to look back at you.
Two Layers in Every Bird SVG
Each SVG file holds one bird on a 200 × 200 mm document, and each file divides the artwork into two layers. The first layer is the base silhouette, which is one solid shape in deep petrol blue (#07526a). The second layer holds the top pieces in turquoise (#71d6d1): 19 pieces on the dove, 16 on the hummingbird, and 4 each on the swallow and the songbird. Every top piece lies completely inside the base silhouette, with a border of at least 2 mm of the base color around it. In addition, no two top pieces touch each other, so every piece is cut as its own shape. The base silhouettes of the dove, the swallow and the hummingbird have no openings, while the base of the songbird has a single opening between its legs. All shapes are filled vector paths without strokes, and the files contain no embedded images.
At the document size, the birds measure about:
- Dove: 152 × 172 mm
- Swallow: 180 × 136 mm
- Hummingbird: 164 × 172 mm
- Songbird: 180 × 116 mm
Apart from the eyes, the narrowest top pieces are the curved highlights beneath the raised wings of the dove and the hummingbird, and they are about 1.8 to 1.9 mm wide. The long feather pieces in the wings and tails are wider than that. A fine-point blade handles these widths well in cardstock and in vinyl, so you can cut the birds at the file size without reworking any shape.
For a layered paper bird, cut the base layer from dark cardstock and the top pieces from a light sheet. Then glue the top pieces onto the base silhouette, starting with the long wing and tail feathers and moving toward the head. The eyes of the dove and the hummingbird are about 3 mm across, and the eye of the swallow measures only about 3 × 2 mm, so these three eyes are the smallest pieces in the set. For this reason, I lift them from the mat with tweezers and set them in place at the very end. A paper dove made this way suits the front of a wedding or christening card, and the hummingbird fits well on a garden party invitation. When all four birds are framed together, they form a small flock for a nursery or a reading corner.
The same two layers also work with vinyl. For a T-shirt or a tote bag, cut the base silhouette from dark heat transfer vinyl and the top pieces from light heat transfer vinyl. Press the base silhouette first. After weeding, the top pieces stay in their correct positions on their carrier sheet, so you can lay the whole feather layer over the dark bird and press it in one step. With adhesive vinyl, transfer tape holds the top pieces together in the same way, which means you can apply the base first and then the feathers to build a two-color bird decal on a window, a mirror or a storage box.
You can also turn the birds into stickers by printing both colors and cutting only the outline. In Cricut Design Space, select both layers of one bird, flatten them into one printable image, and send the project to Print Then Cut. Design Space adds sensor marks around the image, and your home printer prints these marks together with the deep petrol blue silhouette and its turquoise feathers. After you place the printed sheet on the mat, the cutting machine reads the marks to locate the image and cuts around the bird. If you reduce the birds to sticker size, one printable sheet can hold the whole set of four for a journal, a laptop or a gift bag.
On a hobby laser such as a Glowforge or a diode laser, the base layer can serve as the cut line while the top layer becomes the engraving area, so a single piece of wood carries the feather pattern without any gluing.
Because each file is a vector SVG, you can open the birds in a vector editor, change the two colors and resize the artwork proportionally without losing edge quality. Since the silhouette and the feathers sit on separate layers, you can recolor only one of them, for example to match the colors of a baby shower invitation, a spring poster or a screen-printed tote bag design.
Download the Free Two-Layer Bird SVG Cut Files
The download contains four SVG files, one for each bird.
- Format: SVG, one file per bird
- Layers: base silhouette and top pieces
- Colors: deep petrol blue (#07526a) and turquoise (#71d6d1)
- Top pieces: dove 19, hummingbird 16, swallow 4, songbird 4
- Document size: 200 × 200 mm for each bird
Download the bird SVG files and upload the bird you want to start with to Design Space or to the software of your cutting machine. Then choose two cardstock or vinyl colors for the silhouette and the feathers, or flatten the two layers of that bird if you are making stickers. If you work with a laser, import the same file and assign the base layer to cutting and the top layer to engraving. If you work in a vector editor, open the file and recolor the two layers for your own design.
Looking for other formats of this design? Our full collection includes PDF, PNG, DXF, DWG, CDR, STL and STP files. You can access them all on the main collection page.
License and Usage
These files are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 for strictly personal, non-commercial use.
You are free to download, cut, and modify these designs for your personal projects. However, you may not sell the digital files or any physical products manufactured from them. If you share a modified version of this design, you must credit FreePatternsArea and distribute it under this exact same license.
Unauthorized redistribution, reproduction, or commercial exploitation of these files is a violation of intellectual property rights and may result in legal action.