Here's to a New Year filled with limitless possibilities and high hopes!

Cricut DesignStudio, Cricut Create, Cricut Expression, and lil' Cricut will help you turn possibilities into realities. Cricut products are revolutionary to say the least. Now crafting can be more fun and easy than you ever thought possible! Design your projects and crafts in anyway you desire. Make your project as simple as you like or get all "techy" with it using Cricut DesignStudio! You have accomplished so much in 2008. Congratulations! Pat yourself on the back but don't forget to roll up your sleeves. 2009 is sure to be your best crafting and scrapping year yet!

Happy New Year!

Here are some basic guidelines on how to draw with your Cricut machine:

1. Load marker into the black arms (right where you would usually place the green blade assembly).

2. Load paper. It is important that paper is lined up with the top right corner of the mat, and be sure you start your drawing there if you intend to cut the image out later.

3. Choose and draw the image(s) with the markers by pressing CUT. (Just as an added reference: type out the entire phrase all at once instead of individual letters.)

4. Once your Cricut is done drawing the image, switch out the marker for the blade assembly (without unloading your paper or turning off the machine).

5. Now press the Load Paper button. This will take you back to the beginning of the paper where you first started drawing.

6. Press the Repeat Last button. It will enter in the same characters that you have just drawn.

7. Press the CUT button. It will cut out the image directly over the color outline.

After this process you will have an awesome cut with a colorful outline! Hopefully this will clear up most of the confusion with the markers, but if you ever have any other questions on how to use them please contact us. You can reach us by emailing us at support@cricut.com or you can give us a call toll free at 1-877-727-4288. Here are some basic guidelines on how to draw with your Cricut machine. -AdminBecky

Wow! Christmas has come and gone. I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas break. I had all these plans to get caught up on my scrapbooking, but you know the saying "Plan for it and it will come"? Okay, maybe that's not the correct saying, but hey--I thought if I planned to scrapbook, then I would get something done. Nope! I didn't even get any scrapbooking started. Now I have the dread of knowing how much catch up I need to do hanging over my head. Well, to stop myself from rambling I will finish exploring the new Sesame Street Friends cartridge. Last week I talked about all the characters that are in this cartridge and I talked about the creative features as well. As a review, the creative features that come with this cartridge are: Body/White, Layer 1/Layer 2, Layer 3/Extra, Icon, Shadow, and Blackout. I have yet to explain what the Icon feature is so that is what I will discuss in this exploration. As a recap on a few of the characters that come in this cartridge: Sesame Street Sign, Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Baby Bear, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Mr. Snuffleupagus, Bert, and Ernie just a name a few.

The Icon feature gives you a variety of different images. For example, with the Sesame Street sign you get a paint palette, with Elmo you get an apple on a book, as well as a stack of books and an open book. These would work great as accents for a kid's scrapbook page. A teacher could use them for a read-a-thon on their bulletin boards. This will help to encourage kids today to read more (yes, can you tell I love to read books). Other images that come? in the Icon feature is picture of crayons, Sesame Street paper dolls border, a world, a bus, school house, tricycle, skateboard, wagon, dragonfly, butterfly, ladybug, honeybee, flowers, tree, ice skates, sled, snowman, shovel, scarf, crab, sand bucket & shovel, sandcastle, star fish, sun, bar of soap, babies bubble bath, rubber ducky, fish, sail boat, toothbrush, and hair brush. With these images you can cover most of the different seasons on your scrapbook pages or cards. The other images that come with this features are numbers, you get "1" to "9", as well as the number "0", now you can cut dates out with this cartridge. Yahoo!

The shadow and blackout features are the same as other Cricut cartridges. I love having the option to cut out a shadow for my images just in case I want that one image to pop of the page. Other ideas and messages about this cartridge are:

- BunnyLover from the United Kingdom create the cutest Christmas card using Oscar the grouch. Check it out!

- Holly_Rn posted on the Cricut message board the Elmo images that she cut out using this cartridge. She mentioned that piecing the images together was really easy.

This cartridge is such a cute and fun cartridge, I think that Provo Craft has done it again in creating a wonderful cartridge that compliments the rest of the Cricut family. If you want to see more images regarding this cartridge, you can look in the DesignStudio, make sure that you have the latest update then you can get an overlook of the whole cartridge before you decide to purchase it. Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Years!

Crafty Kimber

A: You can install your DesignStudio on as many computers as you would like, and you may create and save your designs on as many computers as you like. However, you can only activate the software to cut out the designs on one computer. So, you can design from anywhere, but you can only cut out your designs on one computer.

The Cricut DesignStudio only cuts designs from cartridges you own, or have present at the time you cut. This is because the DesignStudio is a tool to supplement and maximize the use of the cartridges; it does not replace the cartridges.