This ain’t no inkjet: the Cricut Explore design-and-cut system is a crafter’s dream
Hooking straight up to your computer, the Explore can cut paper and other materials into astonishingly intricate shapes
It might look like your standard issue inkjet printer, but the Cricut Explore is a whole other category of maker’s tool. In fact, you might say it was, ahem, “cut from a different cloth”.
Cutter’s choice
Yes, the Explore is equipped with a tiny blade that it wields with incredible precision. It’ll slice designs into fabric, paper, vinyl, card and posterboard, with cuts from as small as 1/4 of an inch. The cutting arm also has space to hold a marker, so the Explore can write onto and cut a material at the same time.
While the Cricut will be cheaper to run than a printer (no need for that liquid gold they call ink), there will be costs: each sheet of material you feed in needs to be adhered to a backing board, and over time these will need replacing.
Designs can be purchased from Cricut’s Design Space online shop individually or via subscription – pay a monthly fee of US$9.99 (£6) and you can access over 25,000 images and 200 fonts. Alternatively, you can load up your own designs, with the software (Mac and Windows compatible) accepting a range of file formats including .jpg, .gif and .bmp.
The Cricut Explore will be on sale in the US from February for $300 (£180).
[Via: Cricut]
Sam Kieldsen
Contributor