Design technology company Cricut (pronounced "cricket") recently released Cricut Explore, a machine that can cut designs from a range of crafting materials, including paper, chipboard, iron-ons, vinyl, felt and even leather. Now, even the least nimble-fingered hobbyists can produce precision-cut DIY marvels.
"We are driven by the philosophy: How do we get from inspiration to creation?" says Cricut CEO Ashish Arora. "How do we make it easy for people to create?"
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The Explore is a sleek white pod roughly the size and shape of a printer. Inside, there's a cutting module that resembles an InkJet nozzle. But rather than an ink cartridge, the cube houses a small precision-cutting blade that chisels your chosen design -- flowers, stars, even 8-bit text, for gaming nerds -- out of whatever material you choose.
The cutting module can also accommodate a marker or scoring tip, so Explore can draw on your design while it's cutting, or crease the material slightly, which is especially useful for producing greeting cards or objects that can be folded into three-dimensional shapes.
Along with Explore, Cricut launched Design Space, a cloud-based software platform that stores thousands of DIY designs and patterns. Crafters can select from thousands of uploaded designs and images at $0.99 apiece (the iTunes model), or with a monthly subscription; any content uploaded by the user is free to cut.
"Crafting and making and DIY is so social, so all of this is building on networks," says Arora. "Everything is going into the cloud."
The company has brought several professional designers on board so less design-inclined DIYers can choose from a selection of thousands of pre-made crafts, such as paper flowers, greeting cards, skateboard decals and iPhone backings.
At a launch party in Salt Lake City, Utah, designers flaunted the variety of objects Explore could create. Textile designers even made dresses out of scraps of leather and felt cut using the machine.
"[Explore] makes people feel like designers," says Natalie Wright, a DIY blogger and product designer for Cricut. "We're creating really great art for you, but you feel like you've made it."
Now, you have no excuse but to bring those Pinterest boards to life.