Ack, it's been a while since I've posted! Unfortunately this year has been a little rough on me, I lost both of my dogs so motivation has been a little low for me :( I still get things done, but it's usually the bare minimum, so I'm working on getting back up there though!
A while ago I got interested in cut paper art (I don't know if there's a more elegant term for that?), and was interested in making some pieces that way. The trouble is that I have a bit of tendonitis trouble, so working with the exacto blade to cut that paper was painful and difficult. Because of that I had difficulty getting smooth lines, and overall just wasn't happy with the finished product.
I was surfing on Joann's website when one of their sales pages pointed me to some discounted Cricut die cut machines. I'd heard of them since I have a friend whose mother buys her all kinds of things from QVC, but never seen one in person. It got me interested in the idea of being able to use the machine to get perfect curves out of cut paper, as well as being able to produce multiples!
I did a lot of research into it, and although Cricut seems to be the most heavily advertised (as well as offering some of the most reasonably prices machines) they also had the most stringent rules about printing. It was a real disappointment to learn that you really can only print using their images which are expensive to purchase. Since I wanted to use it for my own images, it seemed like it just wasn't going to work, since any savings that I would get buying a cheaper Cricut machine would be lost in me buying expensive 'bootleg' software (which Cricut fights to keep off the market).
I ended up choosing the Silhouette Portrait. It's their lower end model, their higher end one being the Silhouette Cameo. I bought it for $160 from Amazon and it comes with the machine, one blade, one cutting mat and Silhouette's software; Silhouette Studio. Their software allows you to easily upload your own images and make your own cuts, just what I was looking for!
