Hiya Michele and WELCOME to the Cricut MB. MELM has already given you some wonderful answers and information, so there is little more to add. However, I did want to mention, since you said you get creative making cupcake papers ... Cricut has a Lite cart that is totally and completely all cupcake wrappers and cupcake toppers. These could be cut out of different materials, but could also be cut out of frosting sheets for a really fun and creative cupcake embellishment.
You can view what is on the Cupcake cart here ...
http://www.cricut.com/re...books/cupcaketrifold.jpgThe Lite carts are sold exclusively at WalMart here in the United States ... however, I know that there are some online vendors offering them to UK customers as well ... if this is something you are interested in, send me a PM and I will try to get the online vendor web addresses for you, OK?
Also, just to Clarify ...
The Cricut Baby Bug (V-l), Cricut Create and Cricut Expressions machines all cut images, shapes and letters from pre-designed cartridges. The Cricut Cake Machines are made from food safe materials so that you can cut food items ... like frosting sheets, gum paste, pie crust, cookie dough, thinly sliced cheese and lunch meats, tortilla wrappers, pasta dough, etc. ... again, the Cricut Cake also cuts images, shapes and letters from pre-designed cartridges. The Cricut Imagine allows you to print your designs, or cut your designs, or cut AND print your designs ... this machine uses pre-designed cartridges for the images, shapes, letters, and also patterns/colors selections.
All of these machines were designed to be used with cartridges and do not allow you to cut photos, images or designs you have made yourself (at least not at this time) ..... HOWEVER, there are some design tools that are wonderful compliments to the Cricut family that will allow you to "tweak" images and shapes and manipulate them and weld them into new shapes and images that you can design yourself. These tools are the Gypsy and the Design Studio Program.
A Gypsy is a handheld device, it is very portable, you can link all your cartridges to it so that you do not need to carry them around with you, it allows you the ability to design anywhere at any time and later connect it to your Cricut or Imagine machine to cut your designs. The Gypsy works with ALL the Cricuts and the Imagine machine as well.
The Design Studio program (DS) works very similar to the Gypsy, except that it is a program that is loaded onto your computer, and your computer connects to your Cricut via the use of a USB cord. With DS, you have the advantage of a larger screen than the Gypsy ... however, it is not as portable, since you must have your computer to create your designs, nor does it store all of your cartridges for you. With DS, you must insert the cartridges into the Cricut, just as you would if you were using your Cricut manually. DS will work with all the Cricut machines, except the Imagine machine (at least not at this time).
I am sure this is way more info than you were looking for ... but hopefully you found some of it useful.