Crafty Dreams...

I've added and removed this item from my wish list many times over the last few years. I've only removed it because of expense, not at all because I lost interest.

It's the Quickutz Silhouette. If you're crafty at all, I'm sure you've heard of the dream machine, Cricut. This is a similar concept.

Basically, it cuts shapes and fonts out of paper, vinyl and I'm sure other thin materials. In my case, it would be for cards, scrapbooks, misc crafts, etc.

The appeal of this one (personally) over the cricut is the price and the ease. I am ALWAYS drawn in to the shopping channel when they're featuring the Cricut and they make it look so easy. After that much use, I'm sure it is. But my understanding of the Quickutz Silhouette (QS) is that it works basically like a printer, except rather than ink lines, it cuts. Come on-if I'm right, that's genius.

Also, for the Cricut, you have to buy cartridges for each design, font, etc you'd like to use. I'm sure this can get fairly pricey. But with the QS, I've heard you can use any TFF font you already have (or download) and you can buy their designs for a couple bucks or something. Also, I read today that it can also print jpeg's pretty well. Sa-weet!

Anyways, obviously this blog doesn't invite any kind of sponsorship or anything, so this is completely my opinion and thought process as I'm getting ready to make my Christmas cards.

Here are some of the project ideas I've found:

Frig, this thing would have been handy when I was wedding planning.

It's about $250, so certainly not cheap. But for me, or anyone who likes crafting, it's certainly something to have on the list that includes a KitchenAid stand mixer, a sewing machine and a cuttlebug (another paper crafting machine thingy). I.e. the list of things you'll probably never get, but you can pretend you may sometime soon.

How about you? Any experience with the Cricut or QS?