FINALLY I got what I wanted - CriCut Maker 3
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2023-05-05
·
4,136 words · ~20 min read
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i made these with the cricut machine
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dropping things it runs in the family today we're going to be unboxing the cricut maker 3. so this
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machine here is essentially a cnc machine but really user friendly and it's great for people
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like me who have creative vision but don't have professional maker engineering experience you
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know going into our shop and trying to use the trotec laser or light burn it's really intimidating
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i don't want to blow up the machine or you know set things on fire one thing that i love about
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this machine is the versatility so the great thing about professional routers and laser cutters and
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things like that is they do one thing extremely well whereas the cricut does a lot of things
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pretty well surprisingly well actually you know a lot of people use this machine to make products
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they sell on etsy or in their store this is actually the commercial grade one they have
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five or six different types of machines
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and there's a list on their website where you can compare all the different ones to see
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which one you should choose the reason i got the maker 3 is because i wanted versatility i wanted
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the most options possible for what i can cut and the kinds of projects i can make and also
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i wanted the newest shiniest best one because lines get shiny toys all the time so why shouldn't
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i get some in the box comes the machine itself and also the power adapter to connect it to the wall
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and the usb a to b to connect it to your computer if you didn't have bluetooth connectivity on your
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computer
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to note it actually also works with phones and tablets i usually use my laptop just because of
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the functionality the mobile is great for browsing in bed for what projects i might be interested in
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doing next but actually designing and working on my laptop is way easier so the machine itself
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opens up like that the machine comes with the fine point blade already but i got a whole bunch
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of different blades because i wanted to be able to cut different materials and do different things
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this one here is the deep point blade and this one allowed me to cut leather for a scrapbook that i
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would use for a wedding coming up this one here is the engraving tools and then this one here is the
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deeper point blade so just cutting thicker materials as well one of the things i like about the maker
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three is that it has this quick house driving where you can actually change the tips of the
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blades that you got so that one there was the engraving one and now i'm going to put the
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debossing tool on when i bought the cry cut maker 3 i bought the essentials bundle which actually
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came with all of these accessories here so these accessories are you know a tool to help you flatten
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the materials that you're putting on the mat if you're using a mat scissors a tool to help you
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scrape things off your mat we've also got tweezers this is great for when you're working on projects
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that have little tiny pieces that you need to peel off to get your design scoring tool so that's to
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help with folds that you might make especially like this dropping things it runs in the family
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and then we've got this tool another weeding tool just to help get rid of the little bits and pieces
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that you might have what is weeding weeding so that's when you have a design and you have to
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get rid of the little bits and pieces that you don't want from your design so sarah got 10 000
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worth of pantone color chips well this is my version of all the pretty colors which is a pen
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set that i got for the cricut because the cricut can actually a draw for you as well on top of
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cutting things what really yeah cricut says this is their commercial grade machine what do you
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think does it look like it's built really well no on top of vinyl you can cut all kinds of different
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materials so i have iron on material where the kids and i actually made a present for Linus and
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so we made him pjs because his pjs is a little bit smaller than mine but it's a little bit bigger
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old pages were so gross they had a hole literally that he would put his foot through in the knee so
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he would put it on and he would just rip it every time a little bit more so we bought him pjs and
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then i know it doesn't look the greatest but they're supposed to be pjs and they're supposed
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to be things that he likes or that the kids found that made them think of him for example there's
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his you know chevy volt blue chevy volt his badminton they like to read books with him but
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that's some pretty small iron-on pieces right there Linus calls this my chinese knockoff
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made by made by me with love so i actually made all of those not using this one i made it using
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the explorer air that logistics now has i'm still really glad i upgraded just because i was able to
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do a project that i couldn't have done on the other one so that's so cool yeah i made this
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scrapbook for a co-worker's wedding upcoming and i used it to cut this design right here for them
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i could have used it to cut the entire book but because they were square edges
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it didn't seem worth the time to put it in the machine to cut
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it took a long time to cut this design out of here because it's so thick here you can probably see
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how thick that leather is right there it can cut paper too we made this card during a craft night
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me and sarah which is really cute look at that enough about what it can do let's actually do
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something with it but before that let's talk about our sponsor thanks to jackery for sponsoring this
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right now we're connected to the machine using design space and we're going to be drawing our
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pattern on here for what we want to cut or print or whatever the case may be so it's connected by
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bluetooth right now but you also have the option of that cable if you wanted to use it design space
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is made by qriket so that's actually one thing that i'm not as huge a fan of is you're tied to
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their system so if for whatever reason qriket and design space are connected to each other they're
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connected to each other and they're connected to each other they're connected to each other
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i don't know that i would be able to use my machine still one thing that i do like about
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design space and about the qriket community is that there is a huge following out there you can
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find all kinds of projects you can pull images off google or you can actually subscribe to their
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service their monthly subscription service which gives you ready-made projects that you can do
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or images that are already designed for their software i hate paying a monthly subscription
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but one thing that i do like is that they have ready-to-made projects that are good to go and
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that look good so if you're just looking for something that's ready-to-make that you can
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just sit down and you're you don't want to spend a whole bunch of time designing your own thing you
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can just get going but that's also one of the things that i really love about the qriket if i
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want to i can be really involved i can create my own from scratch design and import it and do it or
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i can just pick something off the shelf i'm going to be personalizing my laptop today because i
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don't have anything on it right now i got some images from sarah for our channel logos and what
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i'm going to do is i'm going to upload them to design space right now to cut on this really cool
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vinyl that i got
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and
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you don't actually have to use qriket branded stuff there's a lot of third-party people that
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make replacement blades or materials or cardstock or whatever the case may be so i have four
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different files here okay we can only upload one at a time we'll do that and so when you upload an
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image the qriket actually needs an svg to cut and it'll help convert it to an svg for you to get
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this to be an svg we have to get rid of the background so you can see anything that's
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checkered here means that i've gotten rid of that as well so i'm going to get rid of the background
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of that that i don't want that cut so i'm going to apply and continue and i'm just going to do a cut
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image right now and we're going to upload that this one today oh no what happened it seems like
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it was asking me to update its data terms of service and now hopefully we're working again so
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that is definitely one of the downsides to using proprietary software oh wow sarah gave me a huge
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image i don't think we're going to cut something that big so what do you think should we cut a
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four inch LTT logo something like that yeah and
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i'm going to do some other channel ones we're going to do ShortCircuit
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that one's super fun right now all of my images are black which means that it would cut
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all on the same mat or a piece of vinyl that we're going to put in so if i want to use different
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colors or if i want different cutting sessions i have to change the colors of these we're going to
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do each one a different color these colors don't necessarily mean the color that i'm actually going
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to do but it would be helpful if they were representative oh well jono maybe you get to pick
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it yeah super shiny i love it while jono does that i'm actually going to be using a mat for this
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project with the maker 3 you don't have to use a mat if you get smart vinyls and honestly i've seen
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youtube videos where people will actually pretend that their vinyl is a smart vinyl like they're
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tricking their machine into doing it because smart vinyl costs quite a bit more i like using my mat
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part of it is i can lay it out exactly where i want to and if i don't have a piece that is exactly
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12x12
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by 12 or 12 by whatever dimension i want i can just put a tiny piece that i want to use on the
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side and it'll still cut but if you don't use a mat you can't just load a small piece inside you
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have to load the whole whip so smart vinyl is essentially vinyl but has a thicker backdrop
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so that it's more stable and it goes in without a mat and it'll just cut the top layer but it just
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provides extra support for it i'm going to challenge dbrand i'm going to make my own
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little cry cut business cricket business so this is the standard grip mat which means it's a little
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bit sticky to help your project stick to it that's exactly what you want because you don't want it to
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move while it's in the machine otherwise it's not going to cut properly we're just going to flatten
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this down so that it's sticking properly um oh and apparently this tool sucks because it scratched
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my vinyl what the heck oh no yeah i think this sheet of vinyl is 12 by 24 and they do have 12
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by 24 mats but because my design is only going to be four by four i'm not going to bother doing
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that we're just going to give it a shot we're ready to cut uh right now we've got the base
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material set to the holographic vinyl we've got the pressure set to default we've got the tools
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loaded correctly there's no tool required in a normally this would be for your scoring stylus
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or your pen if you're drawing something and then we've got our fine point blade already loaded so
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we're ready to load our mat so hopefully this works with the roll at the end we'll see oh you
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know what i think the maker 3 actually measures your mat length so this might not work i forgot
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about that oh no it didn't
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yay as you can tell i'm still learning how to use this too perfect so it measured and it says it's
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ready to go it's flashing the start button so here we go we're gonna see it cut every time it's
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cutting i can't help but just stare at it it's so mesmerizing it's like those facebook crafty videos
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those five minute crafts that you just you're just glued to the whole time and it's done can you see
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the design oh that's so cool yeah okay so what we're gonna do is we're gonna pull it off the mat
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sometimes you might have to give it
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one or two tries before you actually get what you want but i'm expecting this to work first
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go just because i'm using the cry cut material and i chose the right setting cricket material
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cricket material oh my gosh i always do that you're supposed to remove all the bits that you
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don't want or you could just remove your design another thing too is a lot of people will use
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transfer paper which is this clear sticky paper where you put it on top of your design
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pull the whole thing off and then stick it on something and then pull the transfer paper off
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but because my design is one solid piece and it's pretty big and i'm not really
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worried about this piece fitting not quite right or in the right location i'm just going to go for
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it and peel it all right where should we put it where let's put it right here yeah do you like
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that jonah yeah i can't see so you're you're guiding me here oh cool hey oh i'm just going
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to open this and get ready to cut this one i have lots more projects to come i want to make stencils
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for our kids room so that we can cut out whatever design we want and there's all kinds of things you
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could do corazón do kids signs using the actual thread signed modularbs you could do handwritten
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school signs you could use your Darwin즈 interviewing team just because i love that because i think as a
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kid I'm going to make all these basics I'm not sure if that's going to make it look very convincing
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but I think if it's going to be pretty good i don't know if it's a lot of right non good looking ます
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using the actual lasers during a Thursday night workshop class with Colin but I probably could
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do it on here if I was willing to use the uh what's it called that bassa wood or basil wood
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I can't remember bassa which is the thinner wood but we ended up using quite a thick wood and you
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can tell it's actually not that loud which I really like the laser in there is really loud
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okay so we're gonna peel that off and this time instead of weeding I'm just gonna take our design
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right off because I think it'll do that transfer paper is probably not a bad idea but I tend to be
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kind of just winging it with my crafts and I wung wrong because I did tear it a little bit
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but that's okay what did I do no see oh I should have used transfer paper oh my gosh I tore it
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all right here we go we're gonna do it again and we're gonna do it with transfer paper this time
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so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut this out and then we're gonna put the transfer paper on
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so yeah it would definitely be a lot easier to just leave it on the mat like this which is what
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I use to do it on the mat
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normally do. I'm just being bad right now. See? There we go. We cut a transfer paper
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approximately the same size. So we're gonna put our transfer paper on, smooth that out.
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Okay, and then let's peel that whole thing off. Oh, see now all the pieces I stuck on the back are left. Oh boy.
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See? Here we go. That's how you're supposed to do it properly without
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ripping and having to redo your project, but you can all learn from my mistakes.
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And then now you get to see exactly how you want to lay it out and it's just way
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easier. I'm gonna put it right there. Does that look good? Yeah. Okay, now we're gonna
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peel that off. There. I think part of the problem is that I didn't clean my
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laptop, like I said before, so here I am being lazy again when I really shouldn't.
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So that might be part of why you see the bubbles. I've done lots of transfers
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where that hasn't happened before, so. But yeah, it's like orange and pink. I love it.
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It looks amazing. Really, I should have left it on here, weeded it, and then put
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the transfer on and then put it on. But I was not thinking straight and just
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pulled it off because I was so eager to put it on. But don't do it that way.
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So I'm gonna do something sneaky. We're gonna print the TechLink logo for Riley,
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but I'm gonna cut it out on the short-circuit background. We'll see if you
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notice this. We're gonna do a nice bright yellow and we'll pick a nice color pen.
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What color, Jono? Blue. Okay. So the way you load tools is you open the flap and then
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you take the pen. You'll hear a little click and then you close it. It's a
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same thing if you need to change the blade. Right now, because we're doing
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paper and vinyl, we can use the fine point blade. So we're just gonna keep that.
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It'll tell me I need to load a pen. It says black pen right now because I just
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went with the default black, but I'm gonna do whatever color pen I want. I
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have the blade that I need and I'm ready to load my map. One of the things I love
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about the Cricut is that you don't have to be great at drawing. You don't have to
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be a great artist to make really nice-looking stuff. This one had nothing
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to do with your art ability. It was about basically folding paper.
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Origami. The Cricut cut everything, scored everything, so I knew exactly
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where to fold and I ended up with a really cool design piece for my kids'
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room. Oh wait, it's drawing and cutting. Oh yeah! But look how well-made it is! It's
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from the Cricut machine, so it can draw, it can cut, it can do all kinds of things.
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Price, I think, is the last thing that we haven't talked about. I spent about 450
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US dollars on this, but that was the essential
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bundle that I got that came with those two sets of tools. Plus it came with a
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bunch of materials that I didn't show you. The lower-end bottles start at around
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I think 230 US dollars. For a lot of people it is expensive. I'm not gonna
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disagree with that, but what it is is a hobby and when I make things that I
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would have had to otherwise spend money for, like decals for my car for, you know,
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our little family figures that would have cost me 50 bucks. Yes, I'm paying for
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vinyl and I'm paying for the machine, but over time with all those projects that
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I've made, I've probably already made a lot of money. I haven't done anything
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like that. I've probably already earned back what I would have spent on that and
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I have my machine now which I can use for future projects. And everything is
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completely custom, which is cool. Or not custom if you don't want it to be and you
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just want to take somebody else's design or subscribe to their service and use
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one of their designs. And homemade nowadays is incredible. Like, I would have
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never thought, you know, 10 years ago that I would have been able to make a homemade
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this. It doesn't really look like that. I don't know that I would recommend the
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Maker 3 to everybody. You don't need the highest-end model. In fact, most of the
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projects I've made so far that I've shown you have been something that you
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can do on the Explorer, which is a really old model. But like I said, I wanted that
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flexibility and that versatility to have the option available to me in the future
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if I do want to do different kinds of projects. The leather one was one that I
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was finally able to do that I wouldn't have been able to do on the old one.
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Also, embossing and some of the other quick swap tools that you can use on this
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machine, you don't have that option on the other ones. So what I would recommend
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is just to look on the Cricut website. They have a great comparison chart there.
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You can see to just kind of pick and choose what you want. Whether or not I'm
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happy that I got the machine, absolutely. I've spent so much time, you know, doing
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this. A lot of people will buy coffee as their splurge or they'll go to the
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movies or they'll go to the casino or they'll drink or whatever. This is my
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splurge and my hobby. So when you count the amount of time that I've spent
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tinkering and playing with it, I think it's definitely worth it. Thanks for
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watching my first ShortCircuit. I hope you liked it. Thanks for bearing with me.
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If you want to check out the product, click the link below.
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If you like my hosting, then let me know what you want to see next time and let me
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know if you want me to come back.