My Cricut and "Craft Room"

The day after Thanksgiving in 2008, I woke up early for the first time ever and we went Black Friday Shopping.  The main purpose was to get some tv related plug-thingy (I still have no idea what it is and does, but it was a really good price for what it did).  Since we were in the neighborhood (even though it was about an hour after the doors had opened), I stopped into Joann's Fabrics to see if they still had any of the original Cricuts that were on sale.  I scored!

I have used it a few times and even though you were not supposed to, in 2009, I bought SCAL which allowed you to use fonts (and other type of files) on your computer to cut images.  I used that feature a few times, but when I upgrade my computer last year, SCAL was not only illegal to use with the Cricut, my original purchase would not work on my Mac.  

After I figured out I couldn't use SCAL, I looked into how to use my Cricut on the computer and found that Cricut has a program called Craft Room that is free!  (I love free!)  It allows you to see the image on your computer before cutting it...you can resize and weld the letters together.  Even though you can see all the cartridges Cricut has to offer and play around with them all, you can only cut images from the cartridges you own.

Forward to now--In July, Cricut started offering free image usage for a week at a time.  I didn't figure this out until late August, but I have been able to take advantage of some of these freebies.

This week, they had Mustaches and Glasses for free.

  

[as you can see, the "Cricut Craft Room Basics" is always free--there are hearts, butterflies, basic letter shapes, as well as a "plant" that looks like a cupcake, and much more!  Currently through Election Day, they also created Obama and Romney files--that cut in the shape of their faces.]

This was pretty awesome because even though I don't "get" the mustache craze, I am planning to put together a photo booth in June for my daughter's graduation party.  

The first go round, I cut them out of black paper--It wasn't bad, but it was a bit flimsy for my needs.  

Then I found some old felt I had lying around.  But that was way too flimsy.  See how you can't see the curled detail!  

This morning, I wandered over to Michaels and paid 99 cents for some very sturdy 9 x 12 felt.  It was perfect!  (I used a Deep Cut Blade on 6, Speed at 2, Pressure at 5, and multi-cut at 2--I found multiple help online using the same criteria.)

Now I have to figure out how to attach it to a stick :)

You could also cut glasses, but they were too thin and you couldn't "bold" them to be a bit sturdier, so I chucked that idea--I am sure I can find "real" cheapy glasses somewhere else.

See that blob of a mustache at the bottom?  It should look like this:

See the major difference?!

Here are all the cuts I made trying out the Mustache and Glasses files for free!

I do have to say though, even if I need to go back, the digital Cricut file is normally only $1.99 for 6 mustaches (plus 6 "shadow" mustaches--which I used) and 3 different glasses.  Not bad if I really need more mustaches.

{they do not only let you try out the cheapy files either!  In August, they had a popular Life's a Party file available that is normally $29.99!  Now if they would only let us try Life's a Beach for my beach themed graduation party I am planning--ha ha ha}