A Look at New Cricut Cartridges

The Cricut Cartridges allow crafters who currently use the Cricut Original or Expression Machine to cut letters and shapes from 1" to 5.5" high as well as phrases, titles and borders up to 11.5" long. When you’re a scrapbooker, much of the fun comes from selecting and purchasing the brand new Cricut Cartridges.

New Cricut Cartridges: Original
The Cricut Cartridges that most crafters are familiar with have 100 designs and 6 creative features. New releases through September 2008 on the original cartridges include:
• Sesame Street Friends
• Sesame Street Fonts
• Pooh and Friends
• Pooh Font set
• Disney: Cars
• Disney: Fairies
• Graphically Speaking
• Hello Kitty Greeting
• Hello Kitty Font
• Storybook
• Wildcard

New Cricut Cartridges: Cricut Solutions
Provo Craft, the creator of the Cricut, has recently started distributing a second type of cartridge. These new cartridges are called Cricut Solutions. They are cheaper than the original or “classic” cartridges, about $49. Here are some of the features:
• New style and packaging, they do not come in a box.
• 50 designs and 2 creative features (mostly Shadow and Blackout/shadow blackout)
• Shape cartridges:
Baseball
Soccer
Wedding
Camp out
Home Accents
Indie Art
Christmas (new)
Basketball (new)
Blackletter (new)
• Font cartridges
Stone Script
Street Sign
Sans serif (new)

Creative Projects and Uses for the New Cricut Cartridges
Many of the new titles are pretty self explanatory as far as to what type of project would be appropriate. For example, Disney characters or the Pooh and Friends shapes and fonts cartridges are great for children’s birthday invitations or decorating nurseries, playrooms and classrooms. Some new cartridge names don’t communicate the theme as clearly, so here are a few ideas for creative projects for those.

• The Blackletter shape cartridge has a traditional Old English–style font and would be great for creating graceful monograms or adding a bit of sophistication to scrapbook pages or home decor.

• Graphically Speaking has lots of titles and phrases and would be a great addition for designing posters with titles or phrases for home décor. These are terrific for layering.

• Sans serif will come in handy when you need a basic font collection for creating posters, signs and fun projects using phrases like “Life is Good”, “Think Big, and “Handle with Care”.

• Storybook comes with lovely borders and frames for all of your magical fairytale projects. It’s loaded with romantic style fonts as well as birds, butterflies and crowns.

• Wildcard is especially nice for the cardmaker. This cartridge includes shaped cards and envelopes for mixing and matching.

So look for the New Cricut Cartridges and bring your imagination to life. The possibilities are endless.