If you love crafts and own a Cricut machine, everything is included with your machine to make your crafts, except the materials to cut. You use your computer to create beautiful designs and “do-it-yourself” projects very quickly and easily then your Cricut machine does the cutting for you.
Some of the projects you can make are: felt and paper toys; holiday, birthday and other cards; labels for home and office use; stencils to make wood and metal crafts; decals and stickers; decorations for parties and other eventful celebrations; jewelry made out of leather; and iron-on for clothing items, such as t-shirts, bags and purses.
To help make your craft projects easier, extra supplies will be needed, along with the ones that come with your machine. There are many supplies you may not actually need, so the following are five of the best tips on buying your Cricut supplies. These are the ones you will love having if you use your machine a lot.
1. Cutting Mats
Your Cricut machine comes with a green standard 12 x 12 cutting mat that you will be able to use for the majority of your craft projects. This mat will help keep a medium weight material in one place while the machine is cutting. There are also two kinds of cutting mats available for other weights of material.
• LightGrip Cutting Mat: to use with lighter weight or more fragile paper.
• StrongGrip Cutting Mat: to use with heavier weight paper or materials that have been stabilized to make them stronger.
2. Cricut Explore Blades
After purchasing your Cricut machine, you won’t have to wait to start cutting out your crafts because it comes with a carbide fine point blade. This blade will cut through almost any cutting you do; however, there are three other blades that will be needed, at times:
• Deep Point Blade: used to cut through thick materials, such as leather, felt, mat board, glitter cardstock, and other similar materials.
• Knife Blade: used to cut through even thicker materials, up to 3/32 of an inch.
• Bonded Fabric Blade: used for cutting fabric that has been bonded with a stabilizer, such as Heat N Bond.
3. Cricut Pens
Your Cricut machine comes with a pen, but you can purchase color pens, either separately or in a set of various colors. Pens come with extra-fine or medium tips, calligraphy tips, or with glitter or metallic. These pens are non-toxic and acid-free, and the ink is permanent when completely dry. You will love these for making different types of holiday cards, birthday cards or other creations, as well as using them for addressing your envelopes.
4. Circuit Tool Set
These tools are especially helpful and will be used many times for all of your projects. This set is definitely “top of the list” to consider when purchasing your supplies and includes the following:
• Weeder: a precision tool (one of the most essential) that helps you separate and remove small pieces of iron-on and vinyl cuts, that aren’t needed, from the liner sheet. You can also poke small holes using just the tip.
• Spatula: helps you lift images off the cutting mat with accuracy and helps prevent tearing or curling.
• Scraper: scrapes and cleans your Cricut cutting mats, which is necessary to keep your material stable during cutting.
• Tweezers: helps smooth your materials on the mat and removes any wrinkles, crinkling or air bubbles, especially if you’re using vinyl or heavy materials.
• Scissors: has stainless steel blades that are extremely sharp and will cut through very tough and thick materials, and also has a micro-tip blade for cutting intricate areas.
• Trimmer: can trim materials up to twelve inches wide, with precision and comes with replacement blade storage for easy access to fresh blades.
5. Scoring Stylus
This will come in handy if you’re making cards or anything that needs folding, and you want it to be precise. You don’t have to take the cutting blade out to put the stylus in. You can use them both simultaneously.
Hopefully, these tips will help you choose the supplies needed for you to have fun and enjoy using your Cricut machine for many years.
