Pros and Cons of using a Cricut personal cutter

[Former_Member]

I've seen the Cricut personal cutter at the craft stores and on YouTube. Do you love, tolerate, or hate your Cricut personal cutting machine? Can you please list the Pros and the Cons in the following manner?

Pros:

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*
*
*

Cons:

*
*
*
*

Just fill in your bullet points with an asterisk so we can keep track of your thoughts for each category.

[Former_Member]

Pros:

* making my own embellishments
*adorable options
*
*

Cons:

*owning lots of cartiridges gets expensive
*doesnt cut as intricately as it should
*mats gets costly
*

[Former_Member]

Pros:
* Being able to make your own die cuts to use for embellishments
* Professional results
* 1000s of images to choose from

Cons:
* Owning multiple cartridges can get expensive (I use cricutmachine.com or like sites and haven't paid more than $15 for a cartridge in a long time)
* Stuck in the Provo Craft dominated world (there's a lot of complaints about it)
* When you start getting a lot of cartridges, you can't remember what you have or what images are on them

[Former_Member]

Pros:

* Making your own gift tags
* Clean cutting for embellishments
* Easy to use
*

Cons:

* Since I have the smaller one I can't make boxes and envelopes larger than 3"
* Expensive accessories
* Can no longer use Sure Cuts A Lot
* No rights to using Harry Potter images (yet)

On a side note, Allison, I found that rather than buying new mats each time, I coat my mats with Zig 2 Way Glue (found at JoAnn or Michaels). After they dry they work like new! Or make good friends with an employee at a craft store and use their discount when the mats are on sale :) Hehe I do that too.

[Former_Member]

@Brigid,

This brings to mind a small quote from an early Beastie Boys song called "She's Crafty". No offense intended. It was the first thing that came to me. Now I've got their old grooves re-running in my memory...

[Former_Member]

Pros:
* you can be very creative
* makes cards, tags, embellishments, envelopes .... boxs
* easy to use
* 99% of time it cuts clean (if set right)
* selection of images
* makes very nice scrap layouts

Cons:
* cost of cartridges
* cost of mats
* cost of cutting blades
* searching for that one image

[PickledCherryPaper]

Pros
* I make a small fortune using my Cricut
* there's always something to create
* an insane amount of imagery to use
* did I mention I make a small fortune using my Cricut?

Cons
* greatly outweighed by the pros
* biggest downfall--not being able to completely design my own images for Cricut

[SweetDee484]

Pros
* It doesn't take up much space

*Cons I can't make the boxes and other nice things that look better bigger than 5 inches.

[Former_Member]

@jennifer - that's hilarious!

[Former_Member]

PROS:

* Saves me copious quantities of time and for what I do, I need consistency. Cricut delivers.

* No more need for dies that are always a little wrong for the job or the wrong size

* Cheap and versatile

* (I think) It brought about several competitors. Now I have a choice when Mr. Cricut stops chirping

* The Crickets keep me awake at night. Crickets, not Cricuts.

CONS

* None so far.

[Former_Member]

Pros:

* Great for beginners (however, I ended up upgrading within 6 months to the anniversary edition)
* Fairly inexpensive
* Can do all kinds of different things

Cons:

* You can only do small things
* I found I was quite limited because of only being able to do a certain size
* You will begin to envy friends if they have a larger one :)

I started out never having scrapbooked before so I got the personal. Within 6 months I hated it only because my neighbor who got me started got the expression a month after I got personal and she could do all kinds of things that i couldn't. I have gotten 99% of my cartridges on ebay and have paid less than 20 for all of them. Yes, you will obtain quite a collection. I made a binder of my images so I could reference it when looking for something in particular as I am up to like 80 cartriges.