Storing And Using Cricut Design Cartridges
Once you start using the Cricut Cake cutting machine, you are bound to build up a stockpile of design cartridges you use to create cake decorations. It’s hard to withstand, when there are so many cartridges that offer designs for every conceivable occasion, hobby, or season, alphabets for writing names or sayings, and lots of different styles, from sophisticated to ultra-cute.
Each cartridge holds a set of several dozen individual designs. To use a cartridge, you insert it into a slot on the front of the Cricut cutter. Each cartridge has a companion booklet that shows the designs on the cartridge. The cartridge also includes a keypad overlay that goes over the keypad on the Cricut Cake. The keypad overlay shows which key to press to choose the design you want. After choosing a design, you can resize it, move it to a different location on the cutting mat, or slant it by pressing the appropriate keys on the Cricut Cake.
The Cricut Cake can cut the designs from any Cricut cartridge, even those designed originally for cutting paper. Some cartridges are designed just for cutting edibles for cake decorating. Designs for weddings, birthday cakes, and seasonal holidays are made just for the Cricut Cake. There is also a line of Cricut Cake cartridges from Martha Stewart.
Cricut Cartridge Storage Options
The bulky boxes Cricut cartridges are purchased in aren’t an easy-to-use way to store them. You might prefer to use binders that hold both the cartridges and their companion booklets and keypad overlays. Binders made especially for the Cricut cartridge library typically store 12 cartridges, booklets, and keypad overlays. When you buy the Cricut Cake machine, you get one binder for design cartridges.
There are also plastic storage boxes made expressly to hold Cricut desgn cartridges. Some people also adapt plastic boxes made for other crafts into storage boxes to hold Cricut cartridges and their accessories.
But these storage techniques lose their value as you get more cartridges, because it gets harder and harder to locate exactly the deisgn you want.
Store and Use Up to 7,000 Cartridges with The Cricut Gypsy®
The Cricut Gypsy is a completely different way to manage a library that includes lots of design cartridges. The Gypsy is a small design and storage computer that creates a database of up to 7,000 cartridges.
The Gypsy makes it possible to put an entire Cricut design library onto a device you can take anywhere. The Gypsy also turns your cartridges into a searchable database. If you want to find a flower or a crown, it’s easy to look at all the flowers or crowns in your library to choose the one you want.
After you select a design, you can use the computer’s “cutting mat” to choose a cutting location, then resize or change the design. You can also join several designs into a single unit that you store as a unit. This is helpful for combining individual letters into names or phrases you want to reuse. You can store up to 10,000 of your own projects — plenty for even the most active Cricut user.
You connect the Gypsy to any Cricut cutting machine through a USB port.
You must buy a cartridge to use its designs on the Gypsy. You attach the cartridge to the Gypsy by cable, then download the cartridge’s designs onto the Gypsy. Once loaded on the Gypsy, the cartridge can’t be loaded onto any other Gypsy. It can still be used in the slot on the Cricut Cake machine, though.
The downside of the Gypsy is its cost. The Gypsy is certainly designed for a regular Cricut user, not an occasional dabbler. But for someone who has already invested hundreds of dollars in a Cricut machine and design cartridges, the convenience of using the Gypsy instead of dealing with individual cartridges can be a major benefit.
Tags: Cricut cartridge library, Cricut cartridge storage, Cricut Gypsy, cricut storage
