hello so as i'm sure you can tell from the
title of this video and the fact that i'm sat next to a very
big box i have a very exciting delivery today
and i'm buzzing about it i have been eyeing up these cricut machines
for years um and i finally invested in a machine i am going to put
so much creativity time and effort into even more products for my shop
soul & fire if you don't know about my shop i will leave it linked in
the description i do greeting cards and i do
daily planners i'm doing more stationery soon i'm looking out
looking out looking to bring out a desk calendar
i want to do notebooks we're going to expand things
but i invested in this cricut machine and i cannot wait and i just i've been
so excited for it so yeah this is all down to you guys for
supporting me for supporting the planner launch i've
used the money that i made from the planner launch and invested it back into
the business i've bought this um i'm investing into suit into some
other things and i'm also purchasing a new printer so
yeah right this whole vlog is gonna be me attempting to figure out how to use
this machine we're gonna give it a go i have zero
ideas how to use a machine like this i've been on pinterest
i've been like watching other people's videos but obviously nothing kind of
compares to having it um with you so we're gonna unbox it and
we're gonna get it out i've bought myself
this little trolley thing here to store it on um
so i think in the future we're gonna end up storing a couple of products
underneath um and like the packing supplies and
then in theory the cricut should fit on top and then
i'm gonna put this mirror on the wall so we're gonna have to re-jig the office
a little bit it's gonna be a tight squeeze but i'm very excited
and hopefully this means we've got more new and exciting products coming
okay i brought some scissors up where are the scissors
i went for the pink one so i'm very excited to see what it's
gonna look like
this is difficult
look at it everyone welcome my new child to the family
i cannot this is so exciting okay it's very heavy though
first things first does it fit on the shelf righty
this is honestly a dream come true you have no idea how long i've been
looking at these things oh there's tape on it that would help
okay so we have a little box of things i will look at that later
we've got some padding i reckon this is going to fit
oh it's smaller than i thought it was going to be
that's a good thing too look at it okay let's unwrap it
i love the color on it
amazing okay you've definitely needed it on here
made to fit obviously i'm going to shove it back a little bit
but look at that perfect fit the trolley is from hobbycraft 2. um i
went in store the other day to get that but y'alls this is so exciting and now
i'll probably have to move the trolley away from the wall if
i'm cutting like bigger projects but she's beautiful look at her
look at it oh my god who'd have ever thought i would get so
excited over a machine like this i absolutely love it
and there's like a little storage part in here
which i didn't know was a thing until i was bingeing videos the other day
um because i actually got in the set from hobbycraft
um it came with these which are the basic tool set this is like 25 quid by
itself you could obviously buy like cheap
versions on amazon but firstly they're very pretty
um and this was cheaper in total anyway and i got the free
three things and then i also got this cutting mat too so
we have all the mats we have all the tools
i i'm gonna have a play around with this it also came with these mats so
these came in the box as standard they've been bent in the in the box so
i'm gonna wear them down with something so i've got the
light grip mat the fabric grip the standard grip
and then i bought the strong grip the other day so i have all
of the mats i thought whilst i was in hobbycraft and
whilst i was getting over excited about it
i bought um another mat and they're pretty cheap so
yeah i'm gonna put hook either on this side of these drawers or like tucked
down there to store the mats
i've just turned it on and it made a loud noise
and we are attempting to connect it to my computer
so it's saying um connect usb connect power turn it on so let's put
the usb in here yes it's found it cool
and then i think eventually you get to do it with bluetooth make sure you've
got the latest and greatest features just please select an image to
get started hmm this one prepare
for cut place small cardstock on the top left corner of the mat which
matte i'm presuming it means the light grip
one because that's what came with the machine although it's very bent because
it's been in the box so from my little set i need this
peel off the protective film thing this cardstock on the left doesn't need
to be a particular way around okay cardstock is placed
confirm the blade is set in place in clamp
b so this is clamp b and the blade is here
i've already like opened this and fiddle with it and then
prepare for cut step three push mat up under the guides towards the rollers
the guides are the plastic things and this is very hard to do with one
hand press flashing button load and only
oh press the flash and go button
i've pressed it camera battery just died but
it's cutting the shape
then unload
look at it remove the cut image and cardstock from
that look at it
this is so cool oh yeah i have like goofy socks on
oh right it is a few days later actually it's like nearly a week later
um since my cricut and my printer arrived i actually can't remember if i
flogged it in the printer i don't think i did
but i mentioned the printer was coming it is now here so i'll show you that in
a second but i've had chance to play with my
cricket a little bit because i've had so much going on i've had a lot of like
brand stuff to do i've had a lot of freelance work to do
um so i've had to like push back designing new things
but last night i actually managed to print off my first lot of
um die cut stickers i do want to do sticker sheets
in the near future so watch out for those i'm thinking of doing ones that
sort of tie in with my planners my weekly
planners and my daily planner obviously um things
that you can like incorporate into that or just into a regular planner
but i want it to be that kind of vibe that kind of pattern um
but for now i have mastered i think touchwood
the art of creating these stickers so i thought i would continue this vlog
by showing you that so my cricket is all set up
here she still looks very beautiful i still haven't quite figured out what i
want in these drawers this drawer is like stuck open because
there's something like blocking it so i will
sort that out but yeah i am in love best purchase ever so happy about it
um i actually bought a scoring tool thing i've not tried to use it yet but
it was like eight quid so i bought that on amazon um
so we're gonna play around with that i think i'm gonna play around with some
greeting card ideas i've got something down
here that i've been cutting out um but yeah there's my cricut
and then over here i have my new printer so
ideally i need like another shelf because if i bend down
you'll see that my old printer is sat underneath it
which probably isn't the best for that printer
um the buttons to turn this bottom printer on and off
are like on top of the actual thing so if i needed to like access the buttons
i'd have to take this printer off of it but um it stays on on standby most of
the time because i print wirelessly so yeah i have done that for now i've put
my label printer underneath um which has worked quite well actually
it fits really well next to this basket i've got my paper
my spare ink for both printers and my little guillotine thing
and then obviously this is for like uh address labels shopify orders it's the
integrated labels i've mentioned a few times
i'll leave them linked in the description and then obviously this
is my shiny new printer and it's a big boy and it's brilliant i've only managed
to print off a couple of things for test prints which i'll show you in a sec
but they are so good it currently has sticker paper in it because i'm going to
show you what i do with the sticker paper thing
but i just i love her a lot she's great
um but yeah this is the sticker that i created last night
um it's just on matte sticker paper just i need to dust my desk let's just log in
so i will screen record my screen so i feel like that's gonna be the easiest
way for me to show you this so you can open
up qriket design space which is the software that comes
with the qriket machine either in like a browser so i use google chrome or
i think it's a recent edition from what i saw they've made like an actual
desktop application so i have a mac so i have
the mac version obviously um and you can create
projects in there and they also have a i can't remember what they call it like
cricut access there's like a monthly subscription thing that you can get that
has like pre-made um tutorials and like projects that
other people have saved on there and you can either pay for each project
every time you need it or it's like seven pound fifty a month
or something for like a subscription okay it's finally loaded
um so down here this is the cricut access
um stuff so you can see there's loads of like greeting cards
ideas i saved one of these the other day i really like this one so i might just
give that one a go um but obviously i want to be creating
my own things rather than creating things that other people have
already made but i have a project in here
this is the stickers or these are the stickers should i say that i
created last night so what i did basically was
create a file in photoshop to a particular width and height um
i'm probably going to do a blog post on this eventually once i get like
the hang of it but qriket has like a certain
dimension that it can print and cut to but i've done
print then cut which means it will right from this software
send this artwork straight to the printer and then once that's printed
i can just put it straight on the cricut but you can see here it says send
printer um i just need to make sure it's on the right printer which it is
and i'm gonna do a couple of copies i think i put five sheets of paper in
there i don't want to bleed and you can see
it's gonna print this black line around the outside
there i think they call it a registration mark and it's just what the
cricut like reads to work out where on the mat the stickers
are
okay so i have five sheets of the stickers and as you can see
it's cut it not cut it it's printed it out with that line on the back like i
mentioned and then i'm just gonna use the blue
matte which is the light grip matte to stick them to yeah i leave the
protective film on it so that it doesn't get
too much dust on it but i've literally used this like four times and it's
already got quite a bit of dust on it so i definitely need to
give this a wipe i think you can use like alcohol-free baby wipe things
so i will invest in some of those but all i'm doing is i'm gonna stick it on
the top left corner push it down and then
i load it into my cricut so i'll turn the machine on that would help
so once i have the stuff the stick sheet stuck to the
mat i have it set to stick a paper this took a little bit of experimentation but
you know um i think it was on default i'm going
to leave it at that and then all you do is i make sure i
have the right blade in which i do i need to load them up and
press the button the software will register that i put the mat in and
all i need to do is click the cricut button which is
flashing so you'll see
it's going to turn a little light on and this is it trying to read the
registration marks
can you see that little light and it reads this side and then it will come
and read the other side as well
just checking where everything goes now it will cut so i'll probably speed this
up but you'll understand what it's doing
all right so it's finished the cut i haven't yet unloaded the paper
it's still not the paper the matte it's still like stuck in the machine
but before i press and load i'm going to just double check that
it has cut them out right which i don't know if you can see but it is peeling
off which means it has all the way through
which is what i want so i will happily press the unload button
it gives me the paper and then we need to peel off
the outer bit to get these off without bending them
i watched menu tutorial and it says to bend the actual
mat rather than bending the material and i've got this little tool that i
showed you earlier in the blog um i'm just gonna peel it off
like this then i'm gonna go in and rather than like trying to pick up
them i just bend it and it starts to pop off and then i like
scrape the edges i've no idea if that makes any sense
and there we have a bunch of little stickers
i love them i think i'm going to leave this vlog here because i feel like i
rambled on a lot um but let me know what kind of
things you'd like me to make with my cricut
obviously it was a big big investment i've been eyeing them up for
so long and i'm so grateful that i even had the chance to
purchase one um it's a scary investment uh but hopefully like the return will be
good hopefully it'll be worth it so yeah let me know what kind of things you'd
like me to make um of course when i get the hang of it a
little bit i can do video tutorials or like draw with me or create with me
or qriket with me um but yeah thanks for watching this video if
you have any questions let me know don't forget to subscribe if you're
watching this and you aren't already and i'll see you next week for another
vlog see you later
you