Cricut expression

It arrived yesterday!! (and four cartridges; another one in the post and two more to come).

I decided last night to have a go and see what I could produce. I used a piece of plain pink 12 x 12 paper that quite honestly wasn't good quality - quite thin - the reason being I didn't want to waste good paper. Oh dear! The mat was so sticky that when I'd done my cuts (and I did quite a few, because they seemed to be going so well) I just couldn't get the paper off the mat. Even when I tried using an old credit card to scrape at it, it still wanted to stick fast and only the top layer of the paper coming off, leaving white backing still on there.

I sought help on one of the craft forums and googled 'cricut mat too sticky' and found that it was a common problem at the beginning - and there were suggestions what to do about it.

So, after running the mat under warm water and scraping away with the credit card, I managed to get all the paper off. Then I felted the mat on my clothes so it wasn't so tacky and got out a piece of K & Company double sided Brookfield paper to have another go.

I figured by now that I probably hadn't paid attention to the pressure setting (something that was pointed out among solutions of what to do in this situation), so I looked at the manual (mmmm I suppose I ought to do that more!) and turned the pressure down. First time I turned it down too much and the cuts didn't go right through. Then, when I turned it up a bit, success:



I've no idea whether I'll ever actually use them, but at least it worked!

What a pity I've got other things I need to get on with, otherwise I could have another play - hopefully later.

In fact I need to make a card for my niece's birthday on 22 April (gosh, that's only a week away and it's got to be posted) so I think I'll set myself the challenge of making a card using the cricut.