Back to school & college items with Cricut Joy Review

Reviewed by Dorothy White

When my children were small I used to love using my sewing machine every day to make them
outfits, usually identical, which didn’t go down very well as they got older. I then progressed to a
knitting machine and they and their friends were proud owners of fancy machine knitted jumpers.
Then they outgrew even the jumpers! I have therefore not made any craft type items for many
years. I lie, several years ago I helped granddaughter make an Egyptian Vase for homework with
Paper Mache and a balloon.
When my eldest daughter said she would leave her Cricut Joy with me together with some vinyl I
couldn’t wait to try it out. First we worked on something for her twins together, she had bought a
couple of plain black pencil cases so we put their name and a dinosaur on each in gold glitter vinyl.
We even put their names on flannels for them in black vinyl!! Once she left I watched YouTube videos
and asked lots of questions before attempting something on my own.
My eldest granddaughter now 17 like a lot of teenagers can be very moody, when asked to do
something she will often reply ‘Whatever!’ I played around with basic text and typed in WHATEVER!
I bought some T shirts in her size and using gold glitter vinyl I cut ‘WHATEVER!’ and ironed it on a
white T shirt for her. To my surprised she wasn’t annoyed, she loved it!!
She has always been dance mad. She attends a dance college in London plus her normal weekly
dance lessons at a local dance school. Saying that, she did until Covid 19 struck, recently all her
classes have been online, but is due to return to college in September. I had a plain canvas bag
which I thought it would be very handy for her to keep her dance shoes or leotards etc in within her
dance bag. I typed in ‘BORN TO DANCE’ and played around with the fonts, I then searched within
the Cricut options for a dancer. I think the one I found is excellent to depict my granddaughter. I cut
this using some of the plain red vinyl my daughter had left with me and pressed it on to the canvas
bag. Another success!!
I had a water bottle which I thought I would name for granddaughter, as she is always losing hers! I
used a gold glitter vinyl and typed her name using Cricut Sans. I cut the vinyl and prepared her name
for the bottle. I used a basic transfer tape and struggled to coax the letters onto the transfer tape. I
then struggled even more to transfer them to the bottle and ended up with just M E G which I
applied by hand. Try again!!
I had a shot glass so I typed ‘Cheers!’ and chose a fancy font and made the whole thing quite small. I
succeeded in transferring the cut vinyl to transfer tape and then onto the glass. It was fiddly
because it was so small!
I decided to buy a different water bottle and once again typed in granddaughter’s name, larger this
time, but using a basic font. This time I used a Cricut permanent smart vinyl and Cricut strong
transfer tape, the letters transferred easily in one go. My only problem was that as I introduced the
transfer tape with the letters on to the bottle the tape stuck and I couldn’t adjust it. It looks slightly
off vertical to me but hopefully my granddaughter won’t notice.
I have of course made mistakes, forgotten to use ‘mirror image’, taken off a wrong piece of vinyl
which I needed for and had to redo, but they say you learn by mistakes. I am still learning and
enjoying creating things using the Cricut Joy while I do!