Tuesday's Tips

Well, Kristi got a CRICUT ~ YAY Kristi ~ and it's been the buzz on our discussion board. So.... the ever-so-knowledgeable Cindy has some great advice. Here it is:

So, here are the two tips I learned and they work with the George cartridge that came with early machines (not sure if it still does?)

Trick #1 - Making letters smaller than 1"I think 1" is the smallest setting, if not than just call this the "making letters smaller than lowest setting tip" (hee hee hee). It is so easy that I can't believe I never thought of it and maybe you Cricut girls already are doing this. You use the sign feature! The machine can cut a small letter on a sign and the height of the sign is 1" (or lowest setting) making the letters about half that size. BTW, there will be some extra waste due to the sign being cut too. ALSO, be sure to slow the blade way down for this or your letters *will* tear. If there are other cartridges besides George with the sign feature, obviously this works on those too.

Trick #2 - Making rings (or hollowed out circles)Again, super easy to do but I sure never stumbled on this one on my own. In fact, even after I'd seen these used on a layout and so *knew* it could be done, I still couldn't figure it out. I had two different users try to email me instructions but I just couldn't figure it out until I saw it done in person (I'm a very visual person-lol!) The trick is in using the silhouette feature. (I had been trying to use the shadow feature, which won't do the hollowed items.) So, the great thing is that this works with ALL the basic shapes on George - hearts, squares, triangles, flowers, etc. And if there are other cartridges with the silhouette feature and solid shapes it works on them too. I love it! It is *so* hard to cut nice rings using a circle cutter, and an "o" is usually not a perfect circle if ukwim.So, have fun playing!

Thanks Cindy!
Happy Scrapping