The Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter is quite simply the most significant advancement in the home crafting toolbox in the last ten years. Using manual tools is a thing of the past for those tricky jobs, as the Cricut machines make cutting to any shape and size a breeze - plus the machines are specifically made to be lightweight enough to go with you wherever you want them. The range of cutting machines is unique in terms of the feature sets, and the fact that they all work independently of any other device (such as PC or laptop). If you're interested in taking your home crafts to the next level of sophistication and professionalism, I'll be elaborating on the functionality of the whole Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter range and what you actually get for your money.
To begin with, the basic modus operandi of all the models is the same. Since there is no PC involved on which to store information about the cutting shapes and designs, the Cricut cutting machines use special Cricut cartridges, each of which houses a set of such designs. Now each cartridge has a specific theme - if you want Disney characters, there's a cartridge for that; if you're into sports designs, there's a theme for that; if you like doing calligraphy, there's a theme for that. In reality you can find several hundred different cartridges available on the internet. When you buy a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter, you will get a couple of cartridges as standard. There are also deals online for one of the cutting machines with some more cartridges thrown in at a discounted rate. Once you've bought your machine, any extra cartidges you require will have to be purchased individually at a later date. The cost of cartridges can really add up, and I recommend you try to expand your selection slowly as you go on, and make the most of the ones you have at any given time.
Once you've plugged in the cartridge and decided on a shape, there are a couple more decisions to be made. The first one is - which material are you going to cut your pattern out of? There are four choices available - vinyl, vellum, card and paper - with all of the Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter machines. Number two - what are the target dimesions for your cutting designs? Depending on which cutter model you have, you can cut shapes varying from a quarter of an inch high up to twenty three and a half inches (in the Cricut Expression model). Decisions made - all you need to do is make your selections using the machine's keypad, press go, and see Cricut spring into action. The result - superb results every time, all done with very little effort on your part.