Cricut: The Creation Companion

The Cricut machine is a revolutionary new tool in the world of crafting and scrapbooking. Brought to the public by Provocraft, the Cricut will completely change how you face your most important crafting projects. With an entire line of accessories and tools beside, the Cricut is the perfect crafting machine for anyone who loves crafts, scrapbooking or personal home decor. The Cricut is an invaluable machine because of its great versatility, providing an unlimited amount of creative freedom for its users. Combined with a great line of guides, accessories and tools to accompany it, the possibilities with the Cricut are endless.

The original Cricut personal cutting machine is used to make cuts from stencil containing cartridges, creating clean lines and providing one with a myriad of choices in size and style of not only fonts, but shapes and forms as well. This machine is simple to use and does not require a computer. Professional results can be achieved in mere minutes if not seconds, as the Cricut is not only accurate but efficient in speed. The Cricut is ideal for scrapbooking. Never again will one have waste time searching for that perfect stencil at the local arts and crafts store, and still only have a limited choice of designs. With the Cricut, creating exactly what your project calls for is only a few button pushes away.

The Cricut is not only perfect for scrapbooking, but can be used to cut stencils for school projects, holiday cards, decorative signs, and even home decor. Safe and easy to use, it is a great tool to share with children in creating fun art projects. It's also a great machine to have around for a small business, or even a centerpiece at a scrapbooking party. The Cricut can create beautiful cards, superior to anything found at a department store, and it is certainly more heartfelt than such as well. For a more personal, yet expertly designed room, the Cricut can quickly produce a multitude of totally customized words or designs to fill and line the walls of a special room. Creating something totally unique, for every and any occasion, has never been easier than with the Cricut.

The Cricut Expression was designed with all of the consumer's largest projects in mind. With the Cricut Expression, a new domain of sizes has been made available to the creator. The Expression is capable of cutting stencils up to 12" wide and 24" long. Home decor can now be done with stencils of an impressive size, fulfilling the user's every need in this area. The Expression is also compatible with all the cartridges that were used with the original Cricut. A great bundle of new features has also been added such as a larger LCD screen, greater language options, metric conversion options, six new time saving modes, heavy duty construction, eight-way navigation for the cutting blade, and many more just waiting to be discovered and used at your disposal. The Cricut Expression is a step up from the original Cricut, but it is an incredible product giving testament to its own name: further pushing the boundaries of your modes of expression.

Another addition to the family of Cricut machines is the Cricut Create. The Cricut Create is a stylish new model, boasting of the same small size of the original Cricut, but also packing a slew of new features like the Expression. For the traveling crafter/scrapbooker that is attached to the Expression's practical new features, the Create provides a great compact solution for storage. The Cricut Create is an absolute must have for the creator on the go.

But, all that these amazing machines can do would be nothing if not for the interchangeable cartridges that are used with them. There are over 80 cartridges available to supply the fonts and stencils needed to create crafting and scrapbooking masterpieces, or whatever else it is that your imagination leads you to create. These cartridges can be separated into five categories, font, shape, licensed, and the special Classmates and Solutions cartridges. These cartridges are compatible with all the Cricut models and are at the very core as to why these great machines provide such an incredible range of creative possibilities. As the number of cartridges only stands to increase, so the potential of creations at your fingertips only becomes more vast.

A wonderful accessory to both the Cricut machines and the cartridges that are used with them, is the Cricut Jukebox. No, it is not a music playing device, but the effect it may have on an avid Cricut user may have something like a musical effect. The Cricut Jukebox makes it possible to use more than one cartridge with your Cricut at the same time. In fact, the Jukebox makes it possible to use up to 18 cartridges at a time. The Jukebox is an incredible device that allows the user to combine all shapes, sizes, designs and fonts to create a truly unique and artistic cut for the project at hand. Never having to switch out cartridges to start new designs and being able to create everything that one could want through a combination of cartridges, the Jukebox makes the Cricuts more efficient and certainly more exciting.

To store or move the Cricut, Provocraft has also provided specially designed totes and bags for the Cricut machines. There are several designs available, varying in size and structure. For the aesthetically inclined consumer, there are a couple of bags available in unique and beautifully styled bags. Bags that are more functional are also available, providing a safety in protective padding and many pockets for projects and other accessories for the Cricut.

There are many more accessories available to accommodate the Cricut machines, ranging from computer programs for the tech savvy, or simply storage devices for the practical and organized. Provocraft has brought to the world of scrapbooking, arts and crafts, and home decorating an incredible and diverse line of products. The Cricut products are easy to use, simple and inexpensive to maintain and absolutely essential to creating the best of home and craft projects. In your office, on your desk or kitchen counter, the Cricut is the perfect creation companion.

The Cricut Expression

The Cricut Expression, by Provo Craft, is a crafter’s dream machine. This amazing new product will cut an endless variety of letters, shapes, figures, and phrases in a wide range of sizes.

From the moment you arrive home with your new personal electronic cutting system, you will amaze yourself with the things you can do. The self contained Cricut Expression is ready to use straight out of the box, just unpack and plug in to begin your creative experience.

The Cricut Expression was designed with ease of use in mind. It allows scrap bookers and crafters to find and create their desired image quickly and easily by allowing you to personalize it with sizing and layering; cut it out, and color it exactly your way all within a matter of minutes.

Images and characters are stored on cartridges. Each one features over 700 images and characters. Each cartridge comes with an overlay. Insert the desired cartridge and place the overlay over the built in keyboard. The overlay allows the keyboard to change key functions to match each cartridge; this eliminates the need to scroll through endless menus hunting for the feature you want. The keyboard overlay has all functions and features of that particular cartridge on display at your fingertips, simply press the button on the overlay to select the desired image. Adjust the dial to the desired size, feed the paper and press the cut button. Best of all, the image cartridges are interchangeable among all Cricut products.

If you find an image on the cartridge, let’s say you find a figure of Sponge Bob, leaning to the left. The image would be perfect for your scrap book page if only it were leaning to the right. Simply use the flip image feature and just like that; you have Sponge Bob leaning to the right.

By replacing your cutting blades with colorful Cricut inks, you can produce that beloved image, character or phrase in the desired color to perfectly match the palette of your scrap book page.

The Cricut Expression is the next generation of Cricut products. This new system offers an exciting and large new range of ideas and abilities. Cut your images in the exact size you desire from a tiny ¼” to 11 ½” by 23 ½”




It will cut more than just paper and card stock, this dream machine will cut vinyl, plastic, chipboard, fabric, thin magnets, fun foam, shrinky dinks, and much more. Create posters, wall lettering, decals, embellishments, signs, labels, stunning scrapbook pages and much more.

By using the etching blades you can score card stock for folding amazing 3 dimensional projects like boxes, cards, photo frames and more.


Create lovely personalized etched glass gifts. Place your vinyl on a cutting mat. Feed mat into the Cricut Expression, select your image and wording. Allow the Cricut to cut a stencil of your image. Peel the backing off the vinyl, and apply the sticky side to your project piece. Next, apply the glass etching chemical and allow to rest for 10 minutes. Rinse with cold water and peel remaining vinyl off the glass. In just 15 minutes from start to finish, you have a beautiful etched glass keepsake.


Use the auto fill mode to select the desired quantity the selected image. The Cricut Expression will tell you how many pages you will need to load into it to create that number of images in that size.

Use the colored ink to create all your images in the perfect colors or, trim them with silver or gold.

One of the best new features is a paper saving mode that will automatically adjust the arrangement of the selected images and characters to best utilize the material being cut.

This incredible cutter is environmentally and economically friendly. Save precious resources by using your scraps. Simply tell your Cricut what size paper you are using to cut each image, this will allow you to use scraps as small as 2” by 2”.

At your local craft and hobby store you can purchase popular phrases and vacation location names; which is grand; as long as those popular words fit your theme. With this personal electronic cutting system, you can create a cut out of the hilarious Freudian slip your mother-in-law made, or the name of the little cabin in the mountains you stayed in. Furthermore, instead of having to glue one letter at a time in your scrap book, you can cut the entire word out as one piece and quickly glue it in place. You will be able to make more impressive scrap book pages in half the time.

No more having to create two of every image to make your scrapbook pages flow from the left side to the right side of the page for a full two page spread. Simply cut one image that covers both pages at one time. Imagine how quickly you could do a two page layout with the same boarder by cutting it all at once. Cut the correct number of photo frames and embellishments you need all at once.


Cricut is working on some wonderful new features that you will be able to use through the built in USB port in the near future. Currently available, is the Cricut Design Studio. This program will allow you to play with your favorite images and make many creative changes to the images. Using the USB port, to connect your computer with the Cricut Expression; you will download the Design Studio into your favorite computer, make your adjustments via your computer and cut them out using the Cricut Expression.

This machine is a scrapbooker’s dream come true. Once you own this delightful machine, you will never have to buy another craft store embellishment, boarder or frame. You will spend less money and store fewer scraps that just did not work like you thought they would. Every dedicated scrapbooker and crafter will definitely want to the Provo Cricut Expression to their crafting library.

Cricut Cartridges And Scrapbooking

Scrapbooking is an artistic expression that started small and blossomed quickly into the global phenomenon that today includes sophisticated cutting machines and the now-famous Cricut, Cricut Machines, and their Cricut cartridges. Gone are the days of cutting out words and patterns by hand. Scrapbookers can now create elaborate designs and phrases for their scrapbooks with the touch of a few buttons. This allows individuals the ability to express themselves more fully, putting scrapbooks together that are able to do justice to the memories they hold.

What is Cricut?

For those that are new to the world of scrapbooking, a brief explanation is necessary to familiarize you with the machine that has revolutionized the way people express themselves through paper-crafts. The Cricut Personal Electric Cutter works together with various Cricut cartridges to create and cut out designs, letters, quotes or personal thoughts for use in your scrapbooks or other crafts.

The cutter does not require a computer to function; it is a completely stand-alone machine. When an individual inputs a cartridge into the cutter machine, hundreds of different design and font options appear. After selecting a design or phrase for the cutter to produce, its programmed blade will carefully cut the pattern out in a very short period.

The Cricut machine can work with a number of different paper products of various thickness, ranging anywhere from vellum to cardstock.

There are currently 3 Cricuts on the market: The Cricut Expression,the Cricut Create, and the Original Cricut Machine. They are all compatible with every of the 80+ cartridges available.

How the Cartridges Works

Each Cricut cartridge has a large amount of data stored on it, as would a computer chip or flash drive used with a standard computer. The data stored inside each cartridge includes many different font types and designs, which range from simple to complex and from minuscule to over-size. Basically, each cartridge provides yourCricut machine with a large inventory of cutting patterns from which to choose. You can select any one of these patterns and your cartridge will automatically program the blades in your cutter to produce the pattern in record time.

The Choices are Limitless

Since each Cricut cartridge contains cutting patterns that are new and unique from the others, the design possibilities are literally limitless. New cartridges are continually released onto the market, expanding the range of design possibilities. There are currently 5 different categories of cartridges. They are font cartridges, shapes cartridges, licensed cartridges, solutions cartridges, and last but certainly not least Classmates cartridges.

Font cartridges do what they say they do and create nice fonts for you to scrapbook with. Shapes cartridges contain many shapes with which to decorate your pages with. Licensed cartridges feature some very famous characters such as Disney princesses, the Pixar Cars, Winnie the Pooh, and Mickey Mouse. The difference between solution cartridges and the other cartridges is the fact that solution cartridges have less shapes, but as a result of that they cost less. Finally Classmate cartridges have an educational edge to them with such cartridges like 50 states, and the Word Builder line. Each category is not well defined in that, they overlap with each other so it's possible to have a font cartridge with shapes, or a Disney cartridge that has (obviously) shapes on it.

Every good scrapbooking aficionado understands that the secret of the art is contained in the layering technique. Scrapbooking combines many different layers of unique paper-craft mediums such as background designs, photographs, framing elements and additional decorative “flair” to bring your memories together into a cohesive artistic expression.

All of this beautiful layering used to take individuals a great deal of time in the early days of scrapbooking. In addition, many individuals were limited in their creativity to their own abilities in the areas of sketching out designs and cutting out elaborate patterns. These tasks are not easy for most people and as a result, many scrapbookers were finding themselves frustrated and unable to create scrapbooks that properly executed their artistic intents.

Therefore, when Cricut cartridges were invented that could work with an easy-to-use cutting machine to create a limitless array of scrapbooking patterns, a wide door of expression was opened to scrapbookers everywhere. Individuals no longer have to spend countless hours of labor cutting out tedious design patterns. Now, by simply popping a cartridge into the Cricut Expression and pressing a few buttons, paper designs are ready to be incorporated into your scrapbook in a matter of minutes.

From Fun to Elegant

Cricut cartridges come in a wide array of stylistic variations, allowing scrapbookers to produce cutouts that range from silly to chic. For instance, some licensed image cartridges offer a large number of Disney character patterns, SpongeBob SquarePants patterns and other widely known children’s characters. However, cartridges are also available that offer gorgeous calligraphy, lovely seasonal designs and intricate monograms.

Whether you are making a summer scrapbook to remember family fun in the sun or you are constructing a wedding scrapbook to share with friends and family, there is a Cricut cartridge that can get the job done. The Cricut cutting machine is designed to cut precisely with materials as common as children’s construction paper or as delicate as Japanese rice paper.

Ideas Galore

When you purchase each individual Cricut cartridge, it comes with a booklet of ideas to help you incorporate all of the patterns available on the cartridge into your scrapbooking projects. In addition to this booklet, the internet is also saturated with sites that are dedicated to sharing scrapbooking design ideas. Many sites can show you creative and unique ways to layer your cutout patterns and pictures so that you can create multi-dimensional memory books that are a pleasure for friends and family to view.

There are also a large number of scrapbooking forums and message boards that exist for the sole purpose of allowing scrapbookers to share their ideas with one another and to review the different scrapbooking tools that are available on the market. These sites can help you to determine which cartridges will be best for you to use with any given project and will also give you some ideas as to what color schemes and layering techniques might work best with the particular assortment of patterns available on any given cartridge.

Where To Begin

With such a large number of cartridges available on the market, it can be overwhelming for beginning scrapbookers that are not sure where to begin. The best place to start your Cricut journey is with the cartridge that comes with every Cricut. The original Cricut machine comes with George and the basic shapes, the Cricut Expressions comes with Plantin' schoolbook font cartridge, and the Cricut Create comes with Don Juan font and shape cartridge. These cartridges will give you an assortment of basic designs to begin with and will allow you to get familiar with how your machine works, as well as how the selection process plays out once you insert your cartridge into the machine.

Once you get the hang of how it all works, the real fun can begin! Try different paper types and colors to bring a great deal of creativity and individualized charm to every new scrapbook page. And whenever you feel the urge to expand your creative horizons, remember that there are always more Cricut cartridges on the market from which to choose.