How to use a Cricut for the First Time + Best Beginner Projects _ The DIY Mommy

Have you recently got a cricket machine and have no clue where to start .

I'm here to help you today .

Hey , everyone .

It's Christina from the Diy mommy dot com .

I'm obsessed with all things cricket .

It's a craft cutting machine and you might have seen a lot of my Diy and Decor ideas using the cricket in previous videos .

I want to thank cricket for sponsoring this video today .

I am so excited to share with you exactly how to set up your cricket right from the box and three projects that I think are perfect for beginner cricket users .

I'm going to go through everything step by step and hopefully by the end of this video , you'll feel confident to open up your cricket , get it all set up and going and make some beautiful products .

Let's get started .

A cricket is a crafted cutting machine that cuts a variety of materials like vinyl , like paper and iron on heat transfer .

I do have a video all about a cricket and what it does .

I will link it in the description box below .

If you want to learn more .

I am unboxing a Cricket explorer two which is the machine that I most recommend to people .

However , if you want to learn about all of the three different machines , cricket currently has on the market , click in the description box below for this video , which talks about all of the different machines and which one might be best for you inside the box , you're going to find the machine , you're going to find a mat , some cords , a pen and more in this packet .

Here , there is a guide on how to get started .

It's quite simple , open up the guide and you're going to see the first little page here tells you to plug your machine in .

So go ahead and plug it in using the little input at the back and also make sure there's a lot of space in the front and the back of your cricket .

The next page tells you to go to cricket dot com slash setup .

Just a quick note , you can download cricket's mobile app and you can set up your machine from there .

I use the mobile app a lot when I want to create something really quickly on the go .

So go to cricket dot com slash set up , you're going to find this screen and then you can download a program called Cricket Design Space .

Once you have that program downloaded and installed on your computer , simply follow the prompts to set up your new machine .

I'm clicking the cricket .

Explore air two , I plugged it in And now I'm going to go ahead and connect it to my computer .

You can connect your machine to your computer using the included cord in the box or you can connect it by Bluetooth , connecting it by Bluetooth is really going to depend on your type of computer .

I will leave a couple of options for that in the description box below .

You can set up a Cricket ID account .

I set mine up with my email address and I'm registering my machine .

Once your machine is registered , it's all ready to go .

Now cricket does provide a few test cut images , but I'm going to show you some really easy projects to get started with your cricket .

Here are my five tips for choosing a beginner friendly cricket project tip .

Number one is choose a one color design .

It's going to be so much easier to make .

Number two , use a design space image three and or use a design space font four , choose a blank that has nice smooth straight surfaces .

And finally , number five , choose a simple design .

We're going to start by making this really cute mug and this is the exact same method I use to make labels as well .

So in cricket design space , click on this little button in the top right hand side called new project , then you're gonna click on the image icon on the left and cricket has a whole bunch of images in design space .

There are some that are free and there are some that you can pay a little bit of money for or you can subscribe to cricket access , which is a monthly fee and it's going to give you a whole lot of images to choose from .

I found this free image .

I just searched create and I'm just inserting it to my new project .

I thought it was so pretty and I love this font that they have in here .

I'm gonna go ahead and click that left button that says templates and I'm going to search for a mug template .

This is going to help me make my little mug decl or decal if you live anywhere other than Alberta Canada , we say DECL here .

It's going to help me make this decl the right size .

I'm clicking on my image .

You can use a little arrow in the lower right hand side to resize the image or you can go up here and change the width and the height to whatever you'd like it to be .

I'm just double checking that this design is going to fit the mug that I found .

I found this beautiful mug at the dollar store and I'm just moving it along on my template to make sure that it looks exactly how I want it to .

Once I'm ready , I'm going to turn my cricket on and put it in the right spot .

The cricket's going to come with the blade already inserted for this project .

I'm using cricket's premium vinyl .

This is permanent vinyl and it's definitely the one that I recommend using for mugs or labels in cricket design space .

Now you're going to click , make it and you're gonna see how the design is going to look cut on your vinyl .

Then click continue and you can select your cricket device in this little drop down menu .

Now you're gonna want to put your material on the cricket mat , remove that protective clear sheet on the mat and then attach your material to the mat .

The sticky mat is what keeps your material in its place while you're cutting it , you can also cut a smaller piece of material like I'm doing here and put it on your mat .

Now turn your dial to the material type you're using .

So I am using a vinyl .

So I'm turning my dial to the vinyl setting .

Then you put your mat inside the machine and click the load button .

Once you're ready to go , you just have to click that little cricket button and it's going to begin cutting your design .

You can see the progress of your cut in a crooked design space and you can watch it , do its thing and it's actually really fun to watch once your cut is all finished , it's gonna tell you , you click that load button again to unload your design .

Now you're gonna do what's called a weeding your design , which is basically removing all of the excess of vinyl from your design .

You can do this with your fingers or you can use cricket's tools to help you get those little bits and pieces .

The tools are extra .

You can find them on the cricket website or you can just use whatever tools you have on hand or your fingernails work for this as well .

Remove all of the excess around the design plus all of the excess inside the letters like the Os , the A's , the E S , et cetera .

Once you're all finished , your design is going to look like this .

It's gonna have the backing behind it and all of the vinyl letters ready to go .

Now you're gonna use what's called transfer tape and this is what's going to transfer your design perfectly onto your mug .

It's gonna keep all of your words in the right spot and all of those tiny little parts of your design in the right place .

Cut a piece of transfer tape that's the same size as your design .

And then you can smooth it onto the design with a cricket tool like this or also just using your hand .

Now take your mug and you can wipe it with a decreasing cleaner to make sure it's really clean and ready to go .

Then you take the duel that you made and remove it from the transfer tape .

I like to place it upside down and remove the backing just like this .

Then carefully place your design on the mug , making sure not to touch that sticky back of the vinyl and smooth it in place really well , you want it to stick really nicely to your mug .

Then finally you're going to carefully remove the transfer tape from the corner just like I'm doing here and your mug is all finished .

This is one of my favorite first time projects to make .

Everybody loves a mug and it's really simple , especially if you use the design space images like I'm doing here , these mugs are hand washed or I've had success washing them in the top rack of my dishwasher as well .

Now we're gonna make a t-shirt and we're gonna use some heat transfer vinyl for this project , which is slightly different than using vinyl .

We're also going to make a design ourselves using a system font .

So using a system font or a font from cricket is a lot easier than trying to import something yourself .

But you could do that later on .

I'm using aerial and I'm just clicking on that text tool on the left hand side and writing .

Let's get started , which is a phrase that I always use at the beginning of all of my videos .

You can resize it using the arrows on the bottom right here or again , you can use those top measurements up here .

I'm going to make my nine inches wide , which is about as much as I want it to be on my T shirt .

You can also use these little line height tools and these width between letter tools up here in design space to move your letters closer together or your lines closer together to make a nice custom look .

You can also go as far as to do the advanced thing and you can divide all of the letters up and move them around like this .

We're not going to do that with this image because I actually like it how it is .

Now we're gonna take that whole image and what I like to do is weld it .

So it's all one piece .

There's no more individual letters .

This whole thing is an image now , click and make it and then you see how it's going to look on the mat for heat transfer vinyl .

You have to click this mirror button because you're basically cutting this on the material upside down .

But don't worry cricket design space does tell you this .

When you send it to your machine , it's going to have a little reminder that asks you to mirror your design and you just have to click this little mirror button here .

I'm using heat transfer vinyl in black from cricket .

I'm putting it the shiny side down on my cricket mat .

Then you load it up to your machine and press start and the cricket machine will do the rest .

Once everything's finished , remove your heat transfer vinyl from the cricket mat , you can cut off any excess .

There are tons of projects you can do with little bits of vinyl .

So definitely keep all of the little bits that you can .

And then again , we're going to go ahead and weed all of the excess vinyl the same way that we weeded the vinyl for our first project .

Now that our design is all weeded and ready to go take a t-shirt and you can fold it in half and use an iron or crickets .

Easy press , either one works , make a little crease in the middle .

So you know where to put your design and place your design in the middle of your t-shirt .

I'm using cricket's heat mat to do this as well .

Then take a cricket , easy press and you can check out cricket's easy press heat settings online to see exactly how hot you have to make your easy press and how long you hold it on your design to transfer it once the design is cool , carefully , remove that backing for the perfect transfer .

Now , you can use a household iron for this , as I mentioned , but the easy press definitely does the best job from my experience .

It has exactly the right heat setting so that the vinyl is going to stay really well on your t-shirt or bag or pillow or wherever you're transferring it .

Now , let's do one final project that's perfect for beginners in cricket design space .

They have a ton of ready to make projects , you just go to the main screen and you can search for projects .

We're going to make this smile card which requires some card stock and the fine point pin , which comes right in the cricket box .

I just want to show you how this works .

I'm going to go into this design .

You don't have to do this , but I want to show you when I detach this design and I click on the smile area and the kite , you can see up here in the operations panel that we're on the pen and you can change that to cut if you want .

And then when I click on this box here , you can see that this is basic cut that can be changed as well .

So you can see which parts are for the pen and which parts are for your blade to cut .

Now , I'm going to make this project and click the continue button .

I'm going to select my cricket device , which is my Explorer Air two .

I'm going to make sure that my little wheel is on card stock and I'm going to insert my pin in the left hand side of my cricket .

You have to open up the lid and really push that in until it snaps .

And then on the right hand side , I still have my blade here .

So we're going to be able to do these two functions one right after the other .

So my material is set to card stock .

It tells me which tools I have to make sure are loaded into my cricket and then I press the load button and when it's ready , I press the start button .

Now , this is really fun to watch .

I love watching my cricket use the pen to do drawing .

So it's starting with a drawing first and then it by itself is switching to the cut blade and doing the cuts .

Now .

So as long as you've identified which lines are cut and which lines are drawn in design space , the cricket is going to go ahead and do them one right after the other for you , then you can remove your design from the cricket mat .

If you have to gently push out any of the design , you can , if you're finding that your blade isn't cutting all the way through , you can play a little bit with that wheel on the right hand side and just move it clockwise once to give it a little bit more pressure .

You also might have to change your blade if you're finding it's not cutting well and you can buy extra blades at cricket dot com or you can buy them at a craft store as well .

Now , we're going to fold the card in half and place a little card insert inside .

You can buy these separately or you can just cut them out yourself from extra card stock .

Now , this is a really cute and simple way to make a card .

And I love how we're using the pen feature and the cut feature as well .

Thank you so much for watching this video today .

I hope you found this set up tutorial and these project ideas helpful if you're a new cricket user or even if you're more experienced , I hope you enjoyed these projects .

Let me know down in the comments below which one was your favorite .

I'd also like to know if you currently have a cricket or if you're considering getting one .

Thanks again to cricket for sponsoring this video .

And if you liked it , please give it a thumbs up .

Subscribe to my channel for more diy and Decor ideas on a budget .

I'm going to leave some more videos that I hope you'll enjoy watching next right up here .

Just a quick note .

You can download cricket's mobile app and you can set up your machine from there .

I use the mobile app a lot when I want to create something really quickly on the go .