CRICUT BASICS

Black Friday shopping is not a fun activity for me but I needed to go out to pick up a new furnace filter and thought I would check out the Cricut Cartridges that this store was selling.....well to my surprise I started talking to the nicest woman who was just given her first Cricut Expression and couldn't wait to get started on albums for her grandchildren, but had no idea where to start.  I told her to open the box and take it slow.  This got me to thinking....there may be others out there that need some ideas on where to start and what to do when first starting to Cricut.  Here are some basic ideas for the Cricut Machine.....
 1)  Cricut Setting Chart for Cutting



One thing that is absolutely critical to making the Cricut cut properly is to have the pressure, speed and depth of blade correct for the type of paper you are using. This, by far, is what makes or breaks your Cricut experience. No one wants to ruin expensive paper by accidently having the wrong settings in place and then shredding their paper! It's certainly happened to me enough times, especially when switching amongst different types of paper like going from heavy cardstock to thin patterned paper.

2) How to Condition your New Cricut Mat

Have you ever noticed that when you get a new mat, it's really sticky! I mean, REALLY sticky! In fact, it's best to only use heavy cardstock initially as the mat will not let the thinner paper come up.

To combat this, after opening the mats up, I usually press the mat against a clean T-shirt (or the one I'm wearing, ha ha!) and this removes the excessive stickiness.

But, Cricut Dan has an even more interesting idea and people on the yahoo group say this prevents those little paper stickies from clinging to your mat!

Look HERE to see Cricut Dan's video about this!