Oh JOY!

 Connecting your cricut joy can be a little fun with windows (I have Windows 11 older versions may be different) I have previously only used a phone to connect to the joy as it's more for the children, but my eldest daughter wanted to start making her own designs and that's not so easy on a phone so we got her a cheap laptop for school and for her to make her own things.

OK if you own a joy or have done some research it connects via Bluetooth, so your computer will need a way of connecting via Bluetooth or it's not going to work.

The machine needs to be paired to the computer via Bluetooth or it won't work. Here is a quick video tutorial of what to do 

2nd hand machines

 

Investing in a cricut is expensive, starting out and not knowing what machine can be costly if you don't know what you want to make with it or what size items you will be making for your projects 

I have heard of so many people investing in a little machine and finding they should have purchased a bigger one. Or finding some of the things they want to make needed the maker, not the explorer

I purchased the maker3, and it's brilliant, but I wanted a smaller machine for my children to work with, so I can carry on with what I'm doing, I wasn't keen on buying a new one for it to be bashed about or damaged let alone the cost of a new one and loosening money from not using it

buying a 2nd hand machine. You can find many places selling machines 2nd hand and this is my advice to buying a second hand machine.

1. No matter how old the machine, once It's registered to someone the warranty is with them, so once you own it the warranty is void 
2. never buy one from someone a long distance away, cricut deactivate faulty machine so they can't be used again, some people will try to sell them on eBay, 
3. never believe the hardly used comment unless you can prove it as your idea of hardly used, and the sellers will differ.
4.  Look around, don't rush to buy one as there may be better priced ones to turn up and will give you a better idea of what a 2nd hand one will sell for 
5. set a price in your head of what you can afford, not what you see a price of on the internet 
6. collect in person and ask for a demo of it working before you hand any money over 
7. haggle a bit don't just hand over the money, a few pounds off will help buy some other things you may need to use the machine 
8. you can save money using cheaper blades and consumables as it's not in warranty id doesn't matter 
9. most importantly, remember if the machine fails it's gone. You have lost that money so if you can't afford to loose the money you're putting into a 2nd hand machine then you need to save up and get a brand new one with a warranty 

when I purchased the joy I didn't see much need for it myself, but it's brilliant for making a cricut insert card for people, making small projects and making use of the scraps we with get with the maker 3 along the road. I also find I can work it better on my phone app

Black Friday deals

Over the past few weeks there have been some brilliant deals for the Black Friday offers for both machine, equipment and supplies so my advice would be keep your eyes open 

places I found good offers this year 

Amazon uk

cricut uk store

I will update as I find any 

Cricut access

What is cricut access? 

It's a monthly or yearly subscription package to the vast amounts of fonts, images and projects that can be used for no extra cost to you while you're subscribed to the package. (not all things in design space application is covered by access, it will tell you if it's not and what the cost of the item you want to use will be before you use it)

what does access give me?

Access gives you a lot of fonts, and images as well as use of the projects that have been done by the cricut team or by other cricut members. It enables more features in the design space for you to use. It allows you a discount from their online store and extra discounts, also the offer to purchase a mystery box each month, this is usually only allowed for access subscribers,

Do you need to subscribe?

No, you don't need to subscribe, a small amount of images and fonts can be used for free from design space. If you want to use other items you can purchase them separately, You can also download files and fonts from other sites that can be uploaded and used in design space without the subscription charge.

Is it worth the subscription?

Access is a monthly subscription service that you can sign up or cancel month by month as you choose, it enables more features in design space for you to use as you wish, the fonts cost £4.99 each and the images cost around 89p each, you can also make use of all the projects without cost.

I work on the theory if I use the close to or the equivalent of what the subscription costs is each month in items on the design space I will subscribe for the next month, if you can plan things, so you only subscribe every other month then you save half the yearly subscription cost.

Why do some things cost extra with my subscription?

As mentioned earlier, some things are not covered by the subscription mainly due to copy rights of the font or image there for it will cost extra for the use of that 

Make your own decision

At the time of writing this, I could only find two machines with any UK support and a good help base for them. Please feel free to comment if you know of any more.

Silhouette here

Cricut here

both makes have different machines for price ranges to suit your needs, the basic software is free, then on you need to purchase the company's subscription package,  the support is available in the UK for both types of machine compared to others

as I say, there are more machines out there, but I don't feel there is the support in the UK for them like these machines 

20/03/23 update

there appears to be a new machine being spoken about by a company, siser (I look forward to seeing more about this in the near future)

We purchased one

 So after a lot of thought, we went and purchased a cricut maker 3 

We looked into a lot of different machines and eventually felt I would invest my money into a cricut, as we never looked into anything like this before, the decision was down to the amount of support available both online and locally in store.

The software looks a little easier to work with and allowed for very basic editing with the app from what I could see on my phone, at the time I was away on holiday so could not try the software on the computer at home.

I went to the cricut site, and they sell 4 types of machine.

Joy (the smallest machine)

Maker (one of the 1st cutting machines)

Explorer 3 (the latest cutting machine in the explorer range) 

Maker 3 (the newest maker machine)

My decision for the maker 3 was it was the newest one that has more tooling and a large base for cutting different materials, it can use