The last few months have been hectic. As I mentioned previously, I’ve been remodeling the house. While the remodeling is done, there’s been a lot of post-construction work I’ve taken on and then moving everything back in. I’m only partially moved in, however if I didn’t get some craft time in soon I was going to go mad! All the stuff I love has been packed away in boxes and inaccessible.
The new Cricut Engraving Tip has been sitting in it’s package for quite a while and I made sure to make some time to unpack the Cricut and give it a try.
Didn’t I just said I wouldn’t get around to trying the Cricut Maker until all the cleaning I was doing was complete? Apparently, I’m a big liar because I had an hour before bedtime last night and I jumped right into unboxing the new machine.
One nice thing I noticed after opening the box is they gave you a few pieces of material to get you acquainted with the machine. Once you load the software you can do these simple test projects with the materials provided.
Speaking of software, I’d like to point out the new machine lets you use pretty much any device. I thought I had saw an iPad in their advertisements, but I didn’t realize you could use android as well. To get started, I just pulled out my android phone and told it to run the first project.
It’s a simple card and kinda cute. It demonstrated it could draw and cut the paper. Which, my old one did. What I did notice with the tools on this machine is that everything is much finer. The cutting blade actually cut fine angles and pieces without issue. The previous machines it was more of a needle tearing through the paper, which worked, but also caused problems if you did anything tiny.
Also the pens are finer. These are more like micron pens instead of fat markers which pretty much made the pens on the previous machine useless since they could only do large letters.
Last, you could test out cutting fabric to embellish the project, which was what I was most interested in. The sample fabric was basic quilting cotton and it cut 4 straight lines without a problem. I would’ve hoped for something slightly more impressive as a demonstration, but it did the job.
After browsing the marketplace for projects to cut, I realized there wasn’t much for me there. I’m well aware I’m not their typical demographic. So a market place of frilly items like doll clothes and lady hats isn’t going to provide much value to me. But I’m used to that. Generally, I prefer to design my own projects but it’s nice to know if I need party signs or random things that they are available.
I spent the weekend cleaning, again. I’m still cleaning my room. It’s not that I’m a slob (I am though), it’s that I have too much stuff for my tiny room. What I’ve been doing is more of a deep clean and simplifying my life a bit. I’ve been going through every drawer, all the clothes in the closet, even under the bed where the monsters are and throwing out things I don’t need.
I made my way through half the closet, half a dresser and one of the desks. Yes, one of the desks — I have multiple. I also have 3 dressers. I’ve really crammed a lot into my small room.
You see, I take up most of the house so I opted to not have the master bedroom. Instead, I take up the other 3 bedrooms and a garage, which all serve as craft rooms. Also, my crafts spill out into the dining room as well but let’s pretend that isn’t happening.
So after all the cleaning I have been doing, I still have half a closet and a desk to clear. Then, I have this to play with:
It’s been sitting there for 2 weeks now waiting for me to finish cleaning and I can’t wait to play with it. I’ve had several models of Cricuts before, but this one is extra awesome. Now it cuts fabric and chipboards and all types of materials because it has new cutting heads. So it’s really going to be used for several types of crafts I enjoy.
Next room to clean is the sewing room. Once I get the Cricut cutting fabric, I’m going to want to do some sewing!
Apparently, I’ve taken up late-night shopping on my phone. All of a sudden plenty of amazon and craft company boxes started showing up. I didn’t realize how many buy buttons I clicked in the past few weeks but everything I ordered seemed to show up all at once! At least I will have plenty of things to write about. The first item I opened up was this set of pom-pom makers.
Now there are plenty of pom-pom makers out there, but this was the one marked as amazon’s choice, which means it’s inexpensive and has good ratings. Most of them look the same and they’re all made of cheap plastic, so why pay for a name brand when you can pay half price for the same thing, amirite?
I bought this because I’ve been knitting beanie hats like a mad man the past week and some of those hats are going to need a pom-pom dangling from the top. The directions are simple, just fold out the little arms and wrap each pair of arms in yarn and push the arms back in.
To be honest, I hated this part. Wrapping the arms was easy, but tedious. Then, something amazing happened. I started cutting the yarn down the center guide and the pom-pom started popping open in the most satisfying way.
It was so satisfying that now everything in the house will need a pom-pom. Good thing I’ve been saving all my scrap yarn from the million socks I’ve made!
After cutting each side, tie a piece of yarn around the center, pop open the arms again and the whole thing will fall apart to review your almost-perfect pom-pom.
Pretty good for my first try. A few little snips here and there and it’ll be a perfect little ball for my hat.
