Shoes from Gypsy and some Christmas Puds

This card, using my favourite of the moment, kraft card, was made using the Christmas rectangles, a new release from Lily-Boo, pop over and take a look, there are the sweetest little fat robins in the set as well. The papers I used are by Mambi, the holly leaves were cut from the paper, so this really was a quick little card to add to my Christmas pile

This next one was made with the first cuts I made with my new Gypsy, the shoes are from Gypsy wanderings, cut at 3". The border punch is one of the new deep border punches by Martha (I use so much of her stuff, that I feel I know the woman well enough now to call her by her first name.................). The sentiment is from the shoe set by MFT stamps

The shoes were 'cuttlebugged' to give them some texture
A lot of you have said that you are waiting for my Gypsy review, and to see what I come up with. I will try to explain where I am coming from with this gadget, and hope it makes sense. I own, but have never used, Design Studio, all my Cricut cards are made by the 'cut and glue' method. To be totally honest, as I don't have time to scrapbook much, and so don't need welded phrases and titles, I have never seen the benefit, or had the time, to spend ages designing, say, a branch with a bird on it, when I can just go ahead and cut the branch and stick the bird on with a glue dot. This method has served me well for the past four years. Another reason for NOT using design studio was lack of space in my crafting areas, I just didn't have the space to conveniently hook up the Cricut to a computer for cutting.

As you know, I live in two places, the UK and Florida, three months in each place, so four times a year, all my cartridges (I have about 35) and all the overlays, and some of the handbooks, get loaded into my hand luggage (I can't check them in, too worried the bags will get lost) and off we all go across the Atlantic again. The gypsy is obviously made for me, just for easy access and storage of cartridges.

However, I am a creature of habit, and at the moment, I am finding the whole thing of design studio (because that's what the gypsy is, a small, portable design studio) a bit of a chore. It is so much easier to load the cartridge and mat into the machine, press cut, and away you go. Instead of which, even for a straightforward cut, you have to manipulate the image on a virtual mat and so on. I need to use it regularly, and I know that this will become second nature to me in a very short time, the catch 22 here being that I am reluctant to upload any cartridges into the machine until I am totally confident that I will get to that 'second nature' stage.

So if you are waiting for 'cut files' of complicated, or even non-complicated design from me, I don't think that will ever happen, I really think that I will just be cutting and glueing in the same old way forever. I quite fancy flipping images to make shaped cards, but that's the height of my ambition...... Those of you who know my work, know that I tend to use the Cricut in conjunction with other mediums, like stamps, rather than as an entity in itself.

Having said all this,( so that you understand how totally non-techy I am), the Gypsy is light, comfortable to hold, I love having access to all the cartridges in one place, and being able to see what is on the cartridges I don't own, so that my next purchase will be much more informed than in the past. I found the whole starting-up installation of the Gypsy sync
programme and the updating of the cricut machine quick, easy and painless. It has a facility to flip the screen for left-handers (me) which is great. The battery life seems good. It will be great not to have to load cartridges and search out the overlays, although the time saved by this will be negated by the time spent on the virtual image before cutting. The screen size is about the size of a nintendo DS screen, and I have been able to cope with that okay. It is small enough to hook up to my Cricut machine without compromising my crafting space. A downside is that I found it impossible to see the screen in bright sunlight, even though I adjusted the settings and brightness.

Will I keep it? I'm pretty sure I will. Would I buy it if I lived in one place and didn't want to design complicated cuts? No. Would I buy it if I still worked and wanted to do some crafting in my lunch hour? Probably. Would I buy it if I went to a lot of crops? Possibly
So, as requested, that's my assessment so far, but please bear in mind that everyone's crafting needs/habits/ambitions are different, so you will have to weigh up the options according to your own needs.