have you recently got a cricut machine and have no clue where to start i'm here to help you today
hey everyone it's christina from mummy dot com i'm obsessed with all things cricut it's a craft
cutting machine and you might have seen a lot of my diy and decor ideas using the
cricut in previous videos i want to thank qriket for sponsoring this video today i am
so excited to share with you exactly how to set up your cricut right from the box and three projects
that i think are perfect for beginner cricut users i'm going to go through everything step
by step and hopefully by the end of this video you'll feel confident to open up your cricut
get it all set up and going and make some beautiful products let's get started a qriket
is a craft cutting machine that cuts a variety of materials like vinyl like paper and iron-on
heat transfer i do have a video all about a cricut and what it does i will link it in the description
box below if you want to learn more i am unboxing a cricut explore air 2 which is the machine that i
most recommend to people however if you want to learn about all of the three different machines
qriket currently has on the market click in the description box below for this video
which talks about all of the different machines and which one might be best for you
inside the box you're going to find the machine you're going to find a mat some cords a pen and
more in this packet here there is a guide on how to get started it's quite simple open up the
guide and you're going to see the first little page here tells you to plug your machine in so
go ahead and plug it in using the little input at the back and also make sure there's a lot of
space in the front and the back of your cricut the next page tells you to go to cricut.com
setup just a quick note you can download qriket's mobile app and you can set up your machine from
there i use the mobile app a lot when i want to create something really quickly on the go
so go to cricut.com setup you're going to find this screen and then you can download a program
called cricut design space once you have that program downloaded and installed on your computer
simply follow the prompts to set up your new machine i'm clicking the cricut explore air 2.
i plugged it in and now i'm going to go ahead and connect it to my computer you can connect
your machine to your computer using the included cord in the box or you can connect it by bluetooth
connecting it by bluetooth is really going to depend on your type of computer
i will leave a couple of options for that in the description box below you can set
up a qriket id account i set mine up with my email address and i'm registering my machine
once your machine is registered it's all ready to go now cricut discs provide a few test cut images
but i'm going to show you some really easy projects to get started with your cricut
here are my five tips for choosing a beginner friendly cricut project tip number one is
choose a one color design it's going to be so much easier to make number two use a design space image
three and or use a design space font four choose a blank that has nice smooth straight surfaces
and finally number five choose a simple design we're going to start by making this
really cute mug and this is the exact same method i used to make labels as well
[Music]
so in cricut design space click on this little button in the top right hand side
called new project then you're going to click on the image icon on the left
and cricut has a whole bunch of images in design space there are some that are free
and there are some that you can pay a little bit of money for or you can subscribe to cricut
access which is a monthly fee and it's going to give you a whole lot of images to choose from
i found this free image i just searched create and i'm just inserting it to my new project
i thought it was so pretty and i love this font that they have in here
i'm going to go ahead and click that left button that says templates and i'm going to search for
a mug template this is going to help me make my little mug decal or decal if you live anywhere
other than alberta canada we say decal here it's gonna help me make this decal the right size
i'm clicking on my image you can use a little arrow in the lower right hand side to
resize the image or you can go up here and change the width and the height to whatever you'd like
it to be i'm just double checking that this design is going to fit the mug that i found
i found this beautiful mug at the dollar store
and i'm just moving it along on my template to make sure that it looks exactly how i want it to
once i'm ready i'm going to turn my cricut on and put it in the right spot
the cricut is going to come with the blade already inserted
for this project i'm using cricut's premium vinyl this is permanent vinyl and it's definitely the
one that i recommend using for mugs or labels in qriket design space now you're going to click
make it and you're going to see how the design is going to look cut on your vinyl
then click continue and you can select your cricut device in this little drop down menu
now you're going to want to put your material on the cricut mat remove that protective
clear sheet on the mat and then attach your material to the mat
the sticky mat is what keeps your material in its place while you're cutting it
you can also cut a smaller piece of material like i'm doing here and put it on your mat
now turn your dial to the material type you're using so i am using a vinyl so i'm turning my
dial to the vinyl setting then you put your mat inside the machine and click the load button once
you're ready to go you just have to click that little cricut button and it's going to begin
cutting your design you can see the progress of your cut in a cricut design space and you can
watch it do its thing it is actually really fun to watch once your cut is all finished it's going
to tell you you click that load button again to unload your design now you're going to do what's
called weeding your design which is basically removing all of the excess vinyl from your design
you can do this with your fingers or you can use cricut's tools to help you get those little bits
and pieces the tools are extra you can find them on the cricut website or you can just use whatever
tools you have on hand or your fingernails work for this as well remove all of the excess around
the design plus all of the excess inside the letters like the o's the a's the e's [Music] etc
once you're all finished your design is going to look like this it's going to have the backing
behind it and all of the vinyl letters ready to go now you're going to use what's called transfer
tape and this is what's going to transfer your design perfectly onto your mug it's going to
keep all of your words in the right spot and all of those tiny little parts of your design in the
right place cut a piece of transfer tape that's the same size as your design and then you can
smooth it onto the design with a cricut tool like this or also just using your hand now take your
mug and you can wipe it with a degreasing cleaner to make sure it's really clean and ready to go
then you take the decal that you made and remove it from the transfer tape
i like to place it upside down and remove the backing just like this
then carefully place your design on the mug making sure not to touch that sticky back of the vinyl
and smooth it in place really well you want it to stick really nicely to your mug [Music]
then finally you're going to carefully remove the transfer tape from the corner
just like i'm doing here and your mug is all finished this is one of my favorite first time
projects to make everybody loves a mug and it's really simple especially if you use the
design space images like i'm doing here these mugs are hand wash or i've had success washing
them in the top rack of my dishwasher as well now we're going to make a t-shirt and we're going to
use some heat transfer vinyl for this project which is slightly different than using vinyl
we're also going to make a design ourselves using a system font so using a system font or a font
from cricut is a lot easier than trying to import something yourself but you could do that later on
i'm using ariel and i'm just clicking on that text tool on the left hand side and writing let's get
started which is a phrase that i always use at the beginning of all of my videos you can resize
it using the arrows on the bottom right here or again you can use those top measurements up here
i'm going to make my nine inches wide which is about as much as i want it to be on my t-shirt
you can also use these little line height tools and these
widths between letter tools up here in design space
to move your letters closer together or your lines closer together to make a nice custom look you
can also go as far as to do the advanced thing and you can divide all of the letters up and move them
around like this we're not going to do that with this image because i actually like it how it is
[Music]
now we're going to take that whole image and what i like to do is
weld it so it's all one piece there's no more individual letters this whole thing is an image
now click make it and then you see how it's going to look on the mat for heat transfer vinyl you
have to click this mirror button because you're basically cutting this on the material upside down
but don't worry cricut design space does tell you this when you send it to your machine
it's going to have a little reminder that asks you to mirror your design
and you just have to click this little mirror button here
i'm using heat transfer vinyl in black from cricut i'm putting it the shiny side down
on my cricut mat then you load it up to your machine and press start and the cricut machine
will do the rest once everything's finished remove your heat transfer vinyl from the cricut mat
you can cut off any excess there are tons of projects you can do with little bits of vinyl
so definitely keep all of the little bits that you can and then again we're going to go ahead
and weed all of the excess vinyl the same way that we weeded the vinyl for our first project
now that our design is all weeded and ready to go
take a t-shirt and you can fold it in half and use an iron or cricut's easy press either one works
make a little crease in the middle so you know where to put your design and place your
design in the middle of your t-shirt i'm using cricut's heat mat to do this as well
then take a qriket easy press and you can check out qriket's easy press heat settings online
to see exactly how hot you have to make your easy press and how long you hold it on your design to
transfer it once the design is cool carefully remove that backing for the perfect transfer
now you can use a household iron for this as i mentioned but the easy press definitely
does the best job from my experience it has exactly the right heat setting so that the
vinyl is going to stay really well on your t-shirt or bag or pillow or wherever you're transferring
it
now let's do one final project that's perfect for beginners
in qriket design space they have a ton of ready to make projects you just go to the main screen
and you can search for projects we're going to make this smile card
which requires some card stock and the fine point pen which comes right in the cricut box
i just want to show you how this works i'm going to go into this design you don't have to do this
but i want to show you when i detach this design and i click on the smile area and the kite
you can see up here in the operations panel that we're on the pen and you can change that to cut if
you want and then when i click on this box here you can see that this is basic cut that can be
changed as well so you can see which parts are for the pen and which parts are for your blade to cut
now i'm going to make this project and click the continue button
i'm going to select my cricut device which is my explore air 2.
i'm going to make sure that my little wheel is on card stock and i'm going to insert my pen in
the left hand side of my cricut you have to open up the lid and really push that in until it snaps
and then on the right hand side i still have my blade here so we're going to be
able to do these two functions one right after the other so my material is set to cardstock
it tells me which tools i have to make sure are loaded into my cricut
and then i press the load button and when it's ready i press the start button
now this is really fun to watch i love watching my cricut use the pen to do drawing so it's starting
with a drawing first and then it by itself is switching to the cut blade and doing the cuts now
so as long as you've identified which lines are cut and which lines are draw in design space the
cricut is going to go ahead and do them one right after the other for you then you can remove your
design from the cricut mat if you have to gently push out any of the design you can
if you're finding that your blade isn't cutting all the way through you can play a little bit with
that wheel on the right hand side and just move it clockwise once to give it a little bit more
pressure you also might have to change your blade if you're finding it's not cutting well
and you can buy extra blades at cricut.com or you can buy them at a craft store as well
now we're going to fold the card in half and place a little card insert inside you can buy these
separately or you can just cut them out yourself from extra cardstock now this is a really cute
and simple way to make a card and i love how we're using the pen feature and the cut feature as well
[Music]
thank you so much for watching this video today i hope you found this setup tutorial and these
project ideas helpful if you're a new qriket user or even if you're more experienced i hope
you enjoyed these projects let me know down in the comments below which one was your favorite
i'd also love to know if you currently have a cricut or if you're considering getting one
thanks again to cricut for sponsoring this video and if you liked it please give it a thumbs up
subscribe to my channel for more diy and decor ideas on a budget i'm going
to leave some more videos that i hope you'll enjoy watching next right up here
just a quick note you can download Cricut's mobile app and you can set up your machine
from there i use the mobile app a lot when i want to create something really quickly on the go