Cricut
Cost: $250 - 300 less with a coupon or special deal.
First up, everyone's favorite,the Cricut. No, I do not own one of these, and likely will not be buying one in the future. Why? Because, in my opinion, the cartridges are very expensive, $40 plus on sale. And you have to buy an additional program if you want to use this machine with your computer to do your own designs. The base price plus the design studio, plus accessories can put you easily over $400.
Pazzles Inspiration
Cost: $599
Next up, the Inspiration by Pazzles. Extras for this machine include a tool to hold any pen, an engraving tool, embossing tool, a whole list of accessories that you can buy. The machine comes with 300 images, and it will pretty much cut on anything you might use, including fabric. And you can hook this machine up to your computer and use images you already have, which means you don't have to buy their images or cartridges if you need more die cuts. This machine also embosses, engraves and distresses (from what I could read the Cricut does not do any of these things).
Slice
Cost: $141.99 and up.
This is a neat idea, a really small, portable cutter, runs on batteries or a cord, and instead of feeding paper into a machine, you place the machine on the paper which enables you to use your paper more efficiently. I like this idea, and they have a kit you can order which will allow you to download any image onto a memory chip that you can then use in their machine. You can also buy a number of memory cards with various patterns, I haven't seen the prices for these cards yet.
Here is the slice in action:
All of these machines offer something a bit different, one can use cartridges and also hook up to your computer, another one can also emboss, engrave and distress, and the last one is portable and runs on batteries.
For my money, given my limited budget, I would most likely go for the slice (which also would fit into my little area a whole lot better then the other two machines). For the price of the slice you can do as much as with the larger cutters, but it takes up far less room and it is portable.
What makes all of these tools nice is that they make your crafting so much easier. And if you are making a large number of the same thing, you just set the machine and cut away, which ends up saving you a whole lot of time.
Do you have any of these machines (I understand the Slice won't be available until October)? What do you like/not like about them? Would you buy it again? Would you buy something different? Why?
Have a great night, and see you tomorrow
