Life is more fun when you RAWR!


Sunday, January 30, 2011

How I hacked my Cricut

I was so very excited when I purchased my cricut.  I got it last summer after drooling over it during middle-of-the-night-baby-feeding infomercials.  After about five minutes of watching that infomercial I walk away wondering how any self-respecting mother can possibly exist without a cricut at their disposal.  I mean, the possibilities!  Oh the possibilities!  And keep in mind, I am not a scrapbooker.  I want my house covered in Vinyl quotes and fun, seasonal decorations.
And in fairness, I've used the cricut a fair amount.  I've cut fabric, made cards, made birthday party decorations, gift tags, bin labels... the list goes on.
Now though, I'm frustrated.  The designs on cricut cartridges are too complex for my needs (most of the time).  And I have a vision for a few projects that I'm working on that are specific and the cricut just isn't cutting it (pun fantastically intended).
So tonight I rang the bell.
It was time to turn to Sure Cuts A Lot.
It was a little tricky because we are a Linux family and SCAL requires Windows or Mac.  Luckily I do have one laptop with a Windows partition (allowing me to access I-Tunes when necessary).  I had to do a lot of updating... usb driver updating twice as well as two firmware updates for my cricut but now I have the freedom to cut out exactly what I want.  FREEDOM.  If I want to fill my entire cutting mat with one letter I CAN!  Hooray!!  No more $50 cartridges that fill only specific roles.  FREEDOM!!
  Of course, now that it's done it's midnight so hopefully tomorrow I can play with fonts and svg files and get these projects done!

8 comments:

  1. Awesome! That is exactly the reason why I haven't bought one - because of the cartridges! Very cool!!!

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  2. How did you hack it? This blog is nice in the sense that you tell us your story, but how do we hack it?

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  3. When I bought my cricut around the same time, I bought the sure cuts a lot software from craftwell but looking at their website now, they no longer support cricut machines. I'm now wondering if there's something else I can use now...

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    1. hi did you get any where after that?

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    2. I have a cricut expression how do i connect it online

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    3. Connect it to your computer with a wire. You need internet access on computer also. Hope this helps.😀

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  4. I have a Cricut and run Linux. Currently I am designing outside of Cricut in GIMP, then uploading onto my Google Drive, and passing it to my tablet which is Android. I would rather be able to connect to my Cricut directly from my design lab on the Linux machine. Any ideas anyone?

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  5. Does this involve soldering the wire to the cricut from my computer?

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