I just got a fabulous deal on a Cricut Expressions on Ebay. Paid $170.02 and free shipping to boot! A reputable dealer with over 29,000 in sales and a 99.9 customer satisfaction rating.
DH was going to get me one for my birthday, up here (Canada) they run between $399 and $499 depending where you shop. I saved him a bunch and now he's letting me ebay for cartridges.
I can't wait to get started.
Instead of buying a lot of cartridges you should look into buying either Sure Cuts A Lot or Make the Cut it will save you a fortune, you'll only have to have one cartridge.
could you please pm me with the name of that ebayer? thank you so much!
star
I just got a fabulous deal on a Cricut Expressions on Ebay. Paid $170.02 and free shipping to boot! A reputable dealer with over 29,000 in sales and a 99.9 customer satisfaction rating.
DH was going to get me one for my birthday, up here (Canada) they run between $399 and $499 depending where you shop. I saved him a bunch and now he's letting me ebay for cartridges.
I can't wait to get started.
Instead of buying a lot of cartridges you should look into buying either Sure Cuts A Lot or Make the Cut it will save you a fortune, you'll only have to have one cartridge.
Thank you for the tip Zdebssweets! I will surely look into those. 
could you tell us more about the sure cuts a lot or the making the cut cartrige? I'd like to have to buy just one cartrige for all the fonts. how does it work? you download something, but that is all I know.
thank you!
melody
Glucose is just corn syrup. But Wilton does sell "glucose".
could you tell us more about the sure cuts a lot or the making the cut cartrige? I'd like to have to buy just one cartrige for all the fonts. how does it work? you download something, but that is all I know.
thank you!
melody
It's not a cartridge, it's software for your computer. With it you can use any fonts or images on your computer or the internet; however there is a learning curve with it. I have Make the Cut and am learning how to use it. If you do a google search there are several tutorials. I believe it is on sale somewhere right now for $59
I'm most interested in different scroll work. would that be a better choice then buying different cartridges?
Corn Syrup and Glucose are technically interchangeable, glucose however is a bit more of a pain to handle in my opinion. Wal-Mart usually carries light corn syrup for less than $2.
On the question of SCAL or cartridge, the caveat is that, while everyone can use a cartridge and everyone can place an SVG file in SCAL to cut, creating an SVG file is not quite as easy.
SVG files are vector based, hence created or edited in a vector based program (i.e. Adobe Illustrator) - most images on the web and in clipart libraries will not work in SCAL without prior editing. Computer skills are definitely required.
Tobias
thank you for explaining Tobias! I'll just be buying some cartridges!
I am not that computer savvy.
melody
Corn Syrup and Glucose are technically interchangeable, glucose however is a bit more of a pain to handle in my opinion. Wal-Mart usually carries light corn syrup for less than $2.Tobias
I also use corn syrup in place of glycerine in my MMF occasionally - I'll bet glycerine could also be use in making modeling chocolate - though corn syrup is definitely the least expensive (the recipe I have for modeling choc uses corn syrup).
I'm not trying to convince anybody one way or the other - but we have had quite a few calls from bakeries that expected to plug and play with SCAL and its a bit more complicated than that. We use SCAL on a daily basis, but I have a background in graphic design. I would definitely experiment with InkScape and the free trial of SCAL first.
As far as using clipart, yes, simple clipart silhouettes will work fairly well - the only problem we've run into is the number of points (the higher the number of points, the longer it will take to cut as every point translates into a "stop" for the cricut).
Multicolor clipart usually has to be separated - meaning all the same colored pieces have to be in an area by itself. Having said that, we have done some nice stuff with multicolor cuts out of colored sheets - see the attached multicolored heart on a showcase cake. All I'm saying is that its definitely not plug and play like a cartridge.
Tobias
What TobiasWilhelm said is exactly right, however seperating with Make the Cut is easier then SCAL. It just seems to be a little more user friendly. There are a lot of tutorials for Make the Cut if you care to check them out. Just do a google search.
OOhhhh, I LOVE the sound of this! I really don't like to put things on my cakes that aren't tasty.... modeling choc. is wonderful!
Thanks for the tip..now I need to get a machine
Jen
So I have worked with my cricut and cutting gumpaste. Sometimes I had great success. Sometimes I had to try over and over and over and got super frustrated. Well the other day I decided to make modeling chocolate so I used every color of candy melt I had and made about 10 different colors of modeling chocolate. I decided to try it with my cricut today. It was AWESOME. No problems. Cut perfect everytime. I rolled it to a 3 on my kitchenaid pasta maker and then stuck on the cutting mat with some crisco and cut away. To get it off I just popped it in the freezer for a few minutes and bent back the mat and the modeling chocolate cake right off.
Jenn thank you so much for sharing this. I wanted to try it but did not have time I will try it next week thanks again.
Careylynn...what brand of "real chocolate" did you use? Did you use white chocolate too...did you color it?
I'm not sure if everyone knows about this yet or not....Cricut is coming out with a new machine just for cake! I don't know much about it but here's the link:
http://www.cricut.com/cricutcake/?gclid=CIeYxu6o6KACFeg85QodEFQDBg
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