New crafting toy - Cricut Explore Air

I have been contemplating buying one of these babies for a long while.

I LOVE my Silhouette Cameo & find it very user friendly.

When I first started scrapbooking back around 2005, I invested in one of the first Cricut machines.

Often called a baby bug.

I used that machine until it literally started smoking & burnt out.....

I cut & cut with that thing.

I learned the Design Studio program, I loved what I could do with it.

However, I still found it quite limiting and I did not feel that Cricut was working to improve it and make it user friendly.

What really stopped me from investing in more Cricut supplies was when they switched their Design program to be internet based only. Meaning you had to have a good internet connection in order to use the machine. 

This did not sit well with me.

Then I won a Silhouette Portrait machine & I was wowed by it.

I ended up buying the Silhouette Cameo & selling off the little guy.

Now, I know that all may sound completely off topic, but hang on a bit.....

I still have all my Cricut machines, yes, plural.... I own a Cricut Create machine, a Cricut Expression and now this little baby here. I still have all my cartridges & other supplies.

I invested in it and it still works, so I'm keeping it. I know my kids will get use out of it to for school projects.

So why did I buy this new machine?

Well, good question?

Ha ha ha!!!

I fell in love with the Close to My Heart Exclusive Cricut cartridges.

They have 5 exclusive collections.

Each cartridge has over 700 images on it.

Each collection also includes (3) D sized stamp sets that coordinate with the cartridge and a Cardstock paper pack.

Once I used one of these cartridges, I was hooked.

Here is the only project I have created with this so far.

This was the project that came with the machine.

What I was disappointed in was that I could not connect to the machine wirelessly from my computer as was described.
Unless, your computer is Bluetooth enabled you cannot connect without the USB cord.
This was not in any of the descriptions I read until I tried to actually do it.

These are solely my first opinions of this new machine.
I will hopefully be able to take some time soon and learn a little bit more of it to get my money out of it.

Stay tuned for more projects!!!
EllyMae