Cricut revealed some great news last week, and implemented the first phase this week!
The biggest piece of news is that the “print then cut” function for Cricut Explore owners is now available via Cricut Design Space. What does this mean? This would allow you to print an item on a printer, then put it in the Cricut Explore machine to cut out. (This is not to be confused with the older Cricut Imagine machine’s “print and cut”, which printed and cut all in the same machine. The Cricut Explore “print then cut” function requires you to actually have a separate printer.) When printing, registration marks are printed along with your image. The Cricut Explore then sees the marks, and uses them to precisely cut out the image you just printed. This is a wonderful addition to an already wonderful machine!
To make perfect usage of this new function, Cricut has added the old Cricut Imagine image sets to print then cut. For those that do not own these cartridges, you can purchase them (or individual images) through Design Space. They also added new “print then cut” images for purchase, as well.
The second piece of news is related: anyone who currently owns a registered Cricut Imagine machine will automatically receive the ENTIRE LIBRARY of Cricut Imagine image sets for FREE (in digital form.) For those of us whose machines were registered, this happened automatically. For those who haven’t registered their machines, you can contact Cricut at imagineowners@cricut.com with your machine’s serial number and cricut.com account email address to have them add the cartridges to your Cricut account. This is by far the largest cartridge giveaway Provocraft has ever done, so make sure to take advantage of this before the year is out. (The deadline is December 31, 2014.) The Cricut Imagine colors and patterns will be added to your accounts at a later date. (The image sets will be unlocked in both Cricut Craft Room and Cricut Design Space, so make sure to take advantage even if you do not own the Cricut Explore.)
This is a nice gesture on Provocraft’s part to appease Imagine owners who now find themselves with a discontinued machine. And, of course, it bridges the gap to start using the free cartridges in Cricut’s newer Explore.
Happy Crafting!