I have finally entered the world of Cricut. Why didn't I do this sooner?!?! I LOVE this thing! And I don't even have one of the new, fancy models. A friend of mine was going to sell her Cricut "Personal Electronic Cutter" (one of the old models) at a garage sale. So, I told her I'd buy it from her instead. So, for $15 I got a Cricut. It doesn't do the big shapes, but really for what I'm probably going to do with it, I don't need anything big right now. If I decide I want something bigger and fancier some time in the future, I can always upgrade. The only downside to buying it used is that it came with no cartridges. But, Cricut has an online design room that comes with a few really basic shapes, so I was at least able to try it out.
For my very first Cricut project, I decided I'd make some gift tags for all of those Christmas presents I have to wrap anyway. So I made four different designs. None of them were hard, and I only bought a couple pieces of paper. Most of what I used was scrap card stock (or glittery red foam) that I had on hand from other projects.
I made this one using just white card stock for the scalloped oval, and red glitter foam for the Christmas tree.
The next one I cut a fancy doodad (I'm sure there's a name for it, but I don't know it) out of white card stock, and cut a small tree in that. I cut a slightly larger doodad out of dark green card stock and used that as the backing.
I took the little tiny tree and attached it to a circle of light green card stock that I cut by using the "O" of the basic (free) font. It was the inside of the O. There is no circle in the free shapes, so it was the best option I had. Then I attached that to a snowflake patterned rectangle.
I still had the actual O itself in the green card stock, so I attached that to a scalloped circle cut out of red card stock. I added another scalloped circle cut out of "Merry Christmas" paper to that (to cover up the hole in the O). I think this one is my favorite.
I'm hoping to get some real cartridges for Christmas and then I'll be able to have fun playing with cards and other projects. Next year, maybe I'll do something a bit more creative with the gift tags, but for my first projects, I think they are pretty good!
