afinally

Okay, so, I figured it out by clicking buttons lol... What I essentially had was, from back to front, white, black, white, black. So I selected the whites, and the black sandwiched between them, and hit combine. That did exactly what I wanted. Then I took the front-most black and selecting both it and the rest of the white, hit subtract, and it did what it should (basically burn a hole through the white). Thanks again for the help! And yes, I'll share a pic when it's all done and printed

@LyricsGirl I'm having a bit of a problem now It was working up until just now. It still is working intermittently, but now I'm trying to subtract one shape (black, in front) from another (white, in back) using the same method, and it's instead deleting the white shape altogether, and turning the black shape's fill to white. Any ideas? Thanks again! I really appreciate it.

@LyricsGirl thank you! You got it right on. Much appreciated!

I zoomed in because I can't show the entire thing, but basically, the design will be printed on a black t-shirt. The only part of the design that will be saved is the white part. To make it easier for me to see when designing it, I made the background black, which I will remove before exporting the file to send to the printer. Because I only want the file/image to contain white (but forgot that I would be removing the background before exporting the file), in order to create a 'hole' in the white section, I used the pen tool to create the shape that I want to remove from the white part and filled it with black. Again, I forgot I would be removing the black background, so now I have a white layer with a black layer on top of it, but really I just want the white layer with an empty space where the little black shape is. The problem is, I have so many of these little black shapes that need to be 'subtracted' from the white layer, so I need to somehow do just that, subtract it, or use it as a mask I guess, rather than using the eraser. Any help, please? Thanks!

I apologize if this is a common topic, but I searched and none of the solutions have worked. I made a shape using the pen tool, and when I try to fill it, it ends up doing this (see photo). The photo is zoomed in because I can't show the entire project yet, but that's not important. Why does it do this and how can I fill the shape? I don't know why there's straight lines going through the shape, I didn't put them there... they appeared when I tried to fill the entire shape. Any advice please? This is a recurring issue and it's really preventing me from moving forward. Thanks!