I just purchased the 12x24 Cricut. I just got it set up but have not tried it yet.
What I am hoping to do is sell the services to cut vinyl letters for people. Maybe I can use that avenue to pay for the machine and pay for new cartridges. People can pay people with commercial cutters alot of money to cut the letters but I can do the same thing with the Cricut.
I also found out you can cut fabric with the Cricut which opens up all kinds of ideas for applique.
I'm also looking into sources for rolls of adhesive vinyl, along with all the major colors, you can get sparkle, mirror, metallics and a kind that you can print a pattern on. I was thinking of doing the saying
"Stop and smell the Roses"for my office where I have roses in the curtain, I was going to print roses all over the vinyl before I cut it out.
I also saw something online that showed the cricut will hook up to the computer, mine has a USB port and I have also read that there is a CD that helps you manipulate the images but I don't understand it completely. With the USB port there almost has to be a way to feed it patterns from a computer on the horizon.
My daughter and I are going to enjoy using this, to make cards for people which she loves to do, of course for scrapbooking and to do her school projects. I have a friend who is christian and I want to do something for her so I thought I would cut out her favorite bible verse for her kitchen, she has a great place for it above the wallpaper border.
I would LOVE to see recommendations about cartridges AND pictures of your projects that you have done with the Cricut.OH, I wanted to tell you that if you guys want to buy cartridges at a good price, our local Michaels sends out coupons for 40% off one item, that would make the cartridges about $50 if you use your coupon for that. In fact my local Michaels had them on sale for $46 the other day when I was there.
The company website also has a drawing for free cartridges AND for December if you sent in proof of purchase for two cartridges, they would send you a third for free.
I have actually thought about once I got more informed about the machine, trying to set up a situation where I can sell them in my area. I don't have a store front but I was thinking more of a home party kind of situation OR doing classes in scrapbooking or applique at the local no name craft place in order to attract attention to them and sell them.
www.cricut.com is the companies main website.