As some of you may know, I own a
Cricut Personal Electronic Cutting Machine like this one.
Sadly, I can't exactly say it was love at first sight. I had read up on the Cricut online, and was disgusted with it's need for cartridges. When you spend good money on a machine, no one wants to be told that they have to spend $30-80 a pop to make it usable!
I was pretty much set on getting a Silhouette, which is far more expensive but does not require cartridges, until Christmas morning, when I opened the biggest present to find that Alan had bought me a
Cricut Personal Electronic Cutting Machine. I'm sad to say that I was not as enthusiastic when I opened it as Alan was hoping I would be. I was really impressed with him for getting it at such a deal - $180 marked down to $80 at Roberts. They hold that sale about twice a year, and it's very much worth waiting for the sale, especially of they will let you combine coupons with it.
After receiving some other cute cartridges I finally decided it was time to stop whining and start using my Cricut. Now I personally HATE cutting with just the Cricut. I'm more anal than I am a perfectionist, so not knowing EXACTLY where each letter and swirl is going to go before I waste my pretty paper or vinyl is frustrating enough to prevent me from cutting with it at all, and doing a test sheet on scrap paper is just wasteful. Cricut offers two different options to help out with this.
1.
Gypsy -
$210 on sale now for $100
The gypsy is a cartridge storage device that allows you to upload all of your cartridges. You can then design and customize your design, and see it on the screen BEFORE you cut your precious paper. You can create your images using multiple cartridges, and transform and move them any way you want.
As far as the negatives you can only use cartridges that you have uploaded to the Gypsy, and you cannot import outside images, text, dingbats, or true type fonts. Additionally the screen is pretty small, so it is not ideal for the vision impaired. It does have a zoom option, but I can imagine it would get pretty tedious to keep zooming and scrolling, especially if you're using a 12x24in mat.
2.
Cricut Design Studio -
$60
The Cricut Design Studio is a program that you install on your computer, that has the entire Cricut library listed. However, you can only cut the designs you own the cartridges for. You have to load the cartridges for each project you use, but you can design using the entire library. I liked that you could use the entire screen, and that I could test drive any cartridge before I bought it.
Negatives are that despite it being loaded onto your computer, you still cannot import outside images, text, dingbats, or true type fonts . You also need to load the cartridge each time you want to cut the design, so it limits you being able to share cartridges with friends (though you can share your design files).
So the total for everything that Cricut has to offer:
Sale Actual
$80 $180 Cricut Personal
$100 $210 Gypsy
$60 $60 Cricut Design Studio
$240 $450 Total not including cartridges.
CRAZY! For all of it's marketing Cricut is really not good at making it so that you can do anything you can imagine with their machine. I understand why they don't. If people could use fonts and images from their computers there's no way they would spend $80 on a Cartridge no matter how cute it was. It's all a marketing strategy (and a rather good one at that) which is incredibly frustrating to me, but I digress. I had the Cricut out of the box, and no marketing strategy was going to prevent me getting the most out of it! So I searched for other options and found a glorious program.
Sure Cuts a Lot -
$50
Can I tell you how much I LOVE this program? If you are using a Cricut make sure you purchase the Sure Cuts a Lot 2.0. Craft Edge (the makers of SCAL) was sued by Provo Craft (the makers of the Cricut) and as part of that lawsuit the newer versions (3.0 thus far) are not compatible with the Cricut, so if you own 2.0 do not upgrade it! The program allows you to use any true type font installed on your computer, as well as any imported image or dingbat. You can download true type fonts everywhere (my favorite place to get them is
DA Font) and I have yet to find a project that I could not download what fonts and images I needed for it for free.
The only negative is that there is no way to import your existing Cricut cartridges directly into the program, but if you can cut the image with your cricut then scan it into your computer, or if you can find the image online, you can easily import it into SCAL. I only have two cartridges, so that's not a big negative for me.
Overall, with SCAL installed I use my Cricut a bunch, and it does everything I really need it to. The biggest difference I see between the Cricut with SCAL and the Sillouette is the price.
Cricut personal 12x6in cutter $80 + SCAL $50 = $130. The Sillouette SD 9x24in cutter = $300. The sillouette does not have a smaller edition, so if you are looking for a cheaper alternative, the Cricut works quite nicely. Even at the full purchase price of $180 plus $50 for SCAL the Cricut is still cheaper than the sillouette.
I hope this review has been helpful!
