Cricut -The Two best machines

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Cricut Explore Air™    New Cricut Explore One™ Machine



Want the ability to easily make a personalized wedding gift or perhaps some unique home décor? Then you might find Cricut electronic cutting machines to be the best DIY crafting tool since the sewing machine. There are two machines that Cricut currently offers on their site: Cricut Explore One™ Cricut Explore Air™ Cricut Explore One™ Cricut Explore One™ is a simple design-and-cut system. It’s versatile, easy to use, cuts very precisely, and is also incredibly affordable. With its irresistibly low price and limitless cutting potential, the Explore One is perfect for a new or beginning crafter. Here are a few notable features of the Explore One: Materials – All Cricut machines can cut an unbelievable variety of materials, for example: Paper Vinyl Iron-on Craft materials Upcycled materials Fabric Plastic Thick materials Precision - Features Cut Smart™ technology, which allows you to cut a wide range of shapes and sizes with exceptional precision, from ¼" tall up to 11½" wide x 23½" tall. Smart Set® Dial - Each machine features a Smart Set® dial, which sets your settings (e.g. speed, pressure, etc.) for you so you don’t have to keep track of them. You just select the material that you're using on the Smart Set® dial and the machine's Cut Smart® technology will deliver a clean, professional cut. Images and Fonts - You can upload your own images and fonts for free on all three Cricut cutting machines. Cartridges - Both machines work with any Cricut cartridge and have the capability to hold all of your cartridges “virtually” in the cloud within your Cricut Design Space online software. So once you’ve loaded a cartridge, you’ll have it everywhere you go. Cricut’s Design Space™ and iPad® app - All Cricut Explore machines work hand-in-hand with Cricut’s Design Space™ (for PC, Mac®, iPad®, and iPhone®) that you get access to for free. Cricut Explore Air™ The Explore Air is the whole kit ‘n caboodle. It offers all the impressive features mentioned for the Explore One, but two key things set it apart: It has a dual carriage for cutting and writing or cutting and scoring in one step. If you do a lot of paper crafting, this is the machine for you! It has built-in Bluetooth® capability. You just use Cricut’s free iPad app and design anything you want from your iPad, just like you would on your home computer, but with the convenience of being able to take your projects with you anywhere. Then, you can just wirelessly send your project from your iPad to your Explore Air to bring it to life. Now that you know a lot more about how Cricut Explore® machines work, I’ll focus next week’s post on how you can design here, there and everywhere with Cricut Design Space. You’ll be blown away by how easy it is. Until then … Happy crafting! .

Half popup cards made in design space

Check out this video if you want to see how to make the half pop up cards below.

 

Multiple objects sliced in Cricut Design Space

Using Design Space is easy especially when you know how. People often want to cut out multiple images from a background image and Design space only lets you slice one image at a time. Well if you weld images together they become one image even if they are not touching. Check out this video excuse me saying stars instead of hearts I had been working with stars.

Cricut Make it now phone holder

The make it now phone holder in Cricut Design space is something I have wanted to do for a while so I just took the chance and did it. Its a relatively simple project with no glue and just slots together. I made it with the paper fundamentals from CTMH which is a slightly stiffer card.

Print and cut on the Explore

Playing with print then cut on the Explore. I cant believe how small the pieces are that this machine cuts. the grid on this black mat is 1/4 inch in mm that's about 6mm. take a look at the little snowflakes. the tiny ones are 2mm the next size 4mm and the big ones (if you coud possibly call them that) are 12mm. I did the print and cut on plane photocopy paper as I wanted to try something out.

That grid is 1/4 inch.

Look how tiny these cuts are

 

Print and cut with the explore

Print and cut with the explore is such a wonderful thing. For card bases or for stickers for the kids its great. These are from vintage birds and vintage flowers they are so lovely. the pad I have put them on is 3 3/8 inches square or 8cm sq so they are nice size cuts for cards or scrap booking.

Lets Learn about Cricut

 This post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking through my links. If you’re reading this post, chances are, you’re a creative type. You like to craft, explore your creativity, and share your creations with others. And it’s for people like you that Cricut created their line of personal electronic cutting machines. A little known fact about Cricut is that they’ve actually been in business for over 50 years, and their primary purpose has been to develop tools that inspire creativity in people. Today, millions of people use Cricut’s award-winning products to create beautiful, inventive, and personal projects. So, what is Cricut? Cricut is actually a family of electronic cutting machines that make it possible for you to easily create amazing do-it-yourself (DIY) projects. Well, not totally DIY because Cricut’s incredible machine’s do a LOT of the heavy lifting. The two machines that Cricut offers are: the Cricut Explore One™ - allows you to cut the Cricut Explore Air™ - allows you to cut and write wirelessly To give you loads of creative freedom and versatility, Cricut developed the Cricut Design Space™, a cloud-based software that works seamlessly with the Cricut Explore® family of machines. Design Space gives you access to all of your images and projects from any compatible computer or iPad, so you can design just about anything, anytime, and anywhere. Once you’ve uploaded your design (or pre-designed image) to your Cricut Explore cutting machine, you can sit back and watch it magically bring your design to life. There are so many interesting things you can make and do with Cricut – which we’ll be sure to cover in a future post. But before we get too ahead of ourselves, it’s best to go over each of Cricut’s machines, what they do, and how they are different. And since I’ve given you quite a bit of info already, we’ll pick up on there in next week’s post! Until then … happy crafting!

  New, easy-to-use Explore One™ machine from Cricut and  Cricut Explore Air™ machine and for those of you who already have an Explore check out Wireless Adapter I have a limited number of adapters available. contact me if you are interested.

 

Thank Ewe Card from Make it Now

Playing with the make it now projects I decided t do a thank you card for a friend who bought me some lovely soup when I was sick. The make it now had a Thank Ewe card a pop up one with a sheep that popped up inside. I decided to add the barn as it looked like a barn in the background so used slice and cut out a 2nd then a third barn to put over the inside and outside of the card. The ewe has some intricate cuts and swirls at 3.5 inches but I also made 2 little ones at 1 inch high. I should have thought and selected intricate cuts on the explore but just cut it on card stock but I think it did really well anyway. With the barn I added the window at the top by changing the score line to a cut line and I added the roof to the barn by using rectangles and welding them to the shape i wanted. It comes with its own envelope which I also made.
 

SVGcuts Fathers day set

what a fabulous set from svgcuts yet again. check out how you get this as a free gift.

Bugged by Campin Critters

As you saw I made the backpack from Campin Critters then I thought campin and thought tent and well there are 2 so I made the first one then couldnt resist making the 2nd one. They are easy to make and could hold a small gift inside. Same problem with desin space as with the back pack but once learnt no problem.

the first  photos are the tent on page 67

this is the tent on page 68