Craft Diva

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently in the process of unveiling my inner craft diva. The Cricut is a toy that I’ve coveted for many moons; so as a belated Christmas/Happy New Year gift to me, I decided I would FINALLY purchase one. I ordered it through Amazon (for all my Amazon addicts out there if you have an edu email address you qualify for a free year of Amazon Prime…sweet!) got my free two day shipping and couldn't wait for it to arrive. It was delivered at the office so I had to wait a whole 4 hours to get home and bust it out of the box. Once I got settled in I pretty much immediately sat down with my little bug and start playing.

I just wanted to get a feel for how it works so mostly I was just goofing around with it. I got my paper all cut and ready to go on the sticky pad, throw it in the machine, type out my cute little Cricut message and press cut. I was so excited to unload the paper and to see my fantastic cutout and then it happened…the frustration. I attempted to lift my design off the sticky pad and realized that the Cricut hadn’t cut some of the paper all the way through. I was a little sad but refusing to be discouraged, I borrowed an Exacto knife from the husband and proceeded to cut the uncut pieces. Once it was all cut up I tried once again to lift my cutout off the sticky pad and it started to rip and tear the paper. Okay, I thought, maybe I need better paper. So I tried a thicker card stock and got the same results. I was so disgruntled and discouraged I had to walk away from the machine after only 30 minutes of playtime.

            Now, I suppose it’s only fair that I should clarify that I am a product of my generation and as such I have issues with gratification i.e. I need for it to be instant. I’m the girl that clicks on the internet button and if the page doesn’t open within 1-2 seconds I click it again and again and end up with 10 or more open internet pages. I know…it’s ridiculous but at least I can see the error of my ways. I’m also a crazy cheap thrifty person and I also like it when things work effectively and efficiently, in fact, I have little patience for malfunctions.

That being said, I’ll continue. I felt so betrayed that my new little bug friend wasn't producing the wonderfully easy, super, fun, creative, little cutouts that I see everywhere. My perfect little personal Cricut wasn't as perfect as I expected. Expressing my immense sadness to my husband, I was kindly reminded that perhaps it would require a little more than 30 minutes spent with the machine to draw any real conclusions about its quality and effectiveness. He also nonchalantly implied that perhaps there might have been some user errors along the way…pssh! Luckily for me and the Cricut, I had a paint project laying in wait so I moved on to that instead (this project has proved much more gratifying to date).

Not one to give up easily (yeah right, right?!), I started watching Cricut tutorials the next day. As it turns out, the majority of the issue was indeed operator error, go figure. While this was a small blow to my craft diva ego, I’ve decided that the Cricut and I can still be friends…I’ll let you know how it works out.