Cricut Explore

Several years ago, Andy and I decided I needed hobby.  Something other than taking care of things around the house and reading a book.  LOL  So, scrapbooking it was.  I have no clue how we decided on scrapbooking, but about 6 years later here I am.  I probably have a couple thousand dollars worth of equipment, paper, embellishments, stamps, pens/pencils, glue, stickers, and so on.  It's funny though because I really don't consider myself a creative person, but apparently it's working out okay for me.

One of the big things I wanted when I started scrapbooking was a way to cut out my own words with my own fonts instead of having to buy stickers all the time or cut them out individually by hand.  That's where the Cricut came in.  We bought my first ever Cricut Personal on sale for $99 over six years ago.  It was seriously one of the only cricuts available at the time.  It has been an awesome little machine and done everything that I ever needed it to do. 

My very first Cricut!
Notice on the left knob where Lonestar ate off a piece of it.

However, it was out of date and the additional software I had to purchase to make my own fonts no longer was supported by cricut.  Since my first cricut, they have come out with several different versions all with new features and more things for you to do.  I will probably never use it to it's full capability and I'm okay with that.

Last week, Andy came home and surprised me with the latest Cricut called Cricut Explore!  It's awesome!  Except for two things - one of my cartridges will not download to design space and I can't cut my images anywhere I want on my page.  I emailed customer support and the reply I got was they could not answer my question via email and that I needed to called the customer service phone number.  Of course, I haven't had any time to do that by the time I get home from school.  So I'll get to it eventually.  Some might think of this as a negative, but I can only use/cut with it if I'm connected to the internet.  I still have my Cricut Personal which I can take with me when we travel and go camping.

 

It came with some supplies so you could already make a pre-designed project.  This was the thank you card it made.  It wrote with the silver pen and then cut out the shadow boxes around the letters.  I seriously did nothing, but put the paper in the machine.  I told Andy it felt like cheating.  There was no gluing or anything additional on my part.