When you have a hobby that has you making delightful and fun things with cardboard, paper, vinyl, fabric or other materials, you always need to take extreme care when cutting the materials into the intricate shapes and designs that you want in your finished product. This is now greatly simplified with the use of Cricut machines.
Cricut machines are cutting machines or craft plotters that work in a way similar to printers. You can create any design or image on a computer and send it to this machine. This Cricut machine will cut that design out of any material that you feed into it. Even faux leather and craft foam can be worked on by this machine. You can even use the machine as a printer by loading a marker into its accessory slot, that will then draw any design you want on to the chosen material even if it is your own handwriting. Your handcrafted product can then be completely personalized.
The Cricut machine can cut materials up to a width of 12″ with a small cutting blade that is part of the machine. The material to be cut must be loaded on to a sticky mat so that material is held in place before the cutting starts. Cricut machines have a lot of shapes and design available in their digital libraries, and you can choose any of them and send them to the machine for the required cutouts. It is possible also to load your own designs that you have worked out on a computer on to the machine. Once the cutting is activated, after the needed design is specified, the material gets cut, and then needs to be unloaded, peeled off the sticky mat, and put to any further use that you have of the now crafted material.
Cricut machines allow you to make fun shapes and letters that you would like to put into a scrapbook. You can make handmade cards, design a T-shirt, make a bracelet out of leather, get your own party decorations and buntings, create any stencils that you need for constant use, make a car window vinyl sticker, make labels, create Christmas ornaments, monogram your pillows, decorate a cup or tumbler, create wall decals, wooden signs and a host of other things. The only limit is your own creativity.
Once you get used to making things on a Cricut machine, you will always find more uses for it that allows you to take your handcrafting hobby to great heights.