Cricut Product Reviews

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!

How to copy your DVDs to your computer

I have been working on backing up all of my DVDs to my external hard drive as of late, and it's been quite the process, but so worth it!  I can rest assured knowing that if Cleo chews up a DVD or if it falls onto the floor and gets scratched, we have a backup copy of it.  Plus, it's a lot easier to carry around our laptop and hard drive than it is to tote around our massive DVD case, and that's even with them out of their individual cases!

Currently they are all sorted according to rating (I couldn’t find my PG-13 tag, so you’ll have to imagine it. 

Imdb.com was a great resource for finding out what the ratings were, as I got rid of my cases a long time ago, and not every DVD has the rating right on it.

After they were sorted, I used three different programs to get them into the format I wanted.  All of the programs below I downloaded for free, and they each have their download link attached.

Everything Android

At the request of Shambray, this is a more detailed description of why I love android phones

The apps

Android allows you to download apps to your phone, just like the iphone (iOS) does, but there are some different pros and cons

+Most of the apps are free with Android

+ you can download a bunch of them, just depends on how much space you have on your phone

+ there is no restriction to the apps that can be developed with Android like there is with the ios. If there is already a similar app, iOS will not allow the second one, even if it's a better app. This means that Android has more duplicates, but you can find the one you like the best. Also, since there is more freedom with an app being released, the prices are generally lower to increase popularity of one over the other.

- Most apps cannot be downloaded and used from your memory card, they must be downloaded to the phone memory, so you cannot just increase your space to store more apps. I usually go through and switch out apps for games and such about once every 2 weeks

-There are less apps currently on the Android market than there are on the iOS market.

- Some apps really REALLY drain your battery, and the battery life is pretty short on my phone.

As far as apps I love:

Farm Frenzy - Game

One of the best live action games on the market, this one was so worth the full version (less than $3). You buy and raise farm animals, and produce different things with what they give you (IE, sheep give you wool, which you spin into thread, then weave into cloth). It has a bunch of levels, and you can set up multiple users with the full version. My siblings always steal my phone when I come over just so they can play this game.

ShopSavvy- Shopping barcode scanner

Anytime I see any shiny new electronic (cameras, laptops, dvds) I whip out this app, scan in the item, and find both locally and online (usually for nearly half the price on amazon.com). It even links up with the site it finds the item on, so I can order it right then and there. I'm amazed at how many barcodes it has stored, as I find almost everything from food to clothes to electronics quickly and easily. This is actually the app that inspired me to get my Android phone.

Google Maps - Maps/navigation

This app saves my butt on a fairly regular basis. Alan has his gps and I have my phone. I can pull the address from my contacts, and then it will give me turn by turn directions to the location.

The voice is a little robotic sounding, and it sometimes gives more information than needed (did you know there are apparently 5 different names for Geneva road?) but it does a great job in getting me where I need to go, and I don't need to lug around yet another piece of equipment around.

*In case you can't tell, I am really really proud of that picture

Android

Have I mentioned before how fabulous Android is? Oh let me count the ways!

I got my first android phone back in April of 2009. The G1, which I still have to this day (I plan to switch to sprint when my contract expires) is rather clunky, but totally worth it for the touch screen, plus the full keyboard which I LOVE.

I've had it in a case with a screen protector nearly every minute since I got it, and I would recommend it to everyone! It is so worth the extra bulk. I am someone who is prone to dropping a new phone seconds after I pay for it, so it was definitely worth it for me.

I won't go over all of the lovliness of the Android market, because it's basically old news, but I will mention the app that initiated this post: Kindle for Android!

I mean, honestly, is this not amazing! I personally am not one of those people who are Nazi's about having a physical book - I'm way more about convenience. I read books on my phone all the time right now, but I've been limited as to which books were available for cheap. One of my main reservations with the kindle is that it's freaking expensive, so you have to buy a ton of books to justify the cost of the reader. With this, I can get the books for cheap, they're with me wherever I go, and that also means one less piece of technology that I need to carry around with me.

I think this illustrates my point, and those are just some of the things that it can do! So for all those people that complain that Android phones are clunky, I say to you neener-neener!

I'm way excited about it! I've already ordered Mockingjay on it, so it will automatically upload to my phone when it releases, and is about half the price of buying the book in the store, or ordering it online with same day shipping.

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