Between a new 3D printer and a growing list of crafty DIY projects around the house, the newly announced Cricut Joy 2 Essential Bundle with all its tools and consumables included sounded like the perfect addition.
A part of jumping into a new hobby is a learning curve, including having to keep buying juist another tool, or just another consumable. Priced at just $249, the Cricut Joy 2 Essential Bundle is a new generation for Cricut, with an aim to get you creating as soon as you can.
It includes almost everything I could want when it comes to starting with a Cricut. You get a bunch of vinyl and cardstock – even iron-on material, enough Cricut says to make up to 35 projects.
You also get all those essential tools you need to get going, tape, cutting mat, tools including scrapers, trimmers, spudgers and more, even a nice guillotine for ensuring straight cuts. It’s enough to keep a tool geek like me happy for quite some time.
The Cricut Joy 2 itself is a new design, smaller and more portable than the first generation, able to create custom cards, labels, simple decals, as well as adding in the ability support for full-colour stickers thanks to the new Print Then Cut sensor.
It’s a compact load of fun in a box, so did I have to duck out to the shops repeatedly to get going? Well, I cracked this open over the weekend and had a crack with some projects and here’s how it went.
It’s super easy to set up the Cricut Joy 2. The power supply comes with the AU connector in the bag with the power brick – but if you ever move to another country there’s four additional country connectors in the box.
The machine itself can only be described as cute. Its two-tone blue colour looks friendly, and there’s not a lot to the machine so it’s quite compact at just 1.2kg so if you ever want to pack it up and take it on the road it would fit easily into a bag…which is where the additional country power connectors come in handy.
While it’s compact in size it can still make decently large projects. Cricut says it can handle projects up to 10.6×29.7cm on a machine mat, or up to 1.2 m long with Smart Materials.
As a novice, I think I’ll be starting with the included Machine Mat. It’s a light grip, which seems to work with all my projects.
| The Essentials Bundle is a big attraction, with almost no need to purchase anything else. Like any good hobby though, there’s a whole rabbit hole of consumables and accessories you can go down on the Cricut website – and I grabbed a few extras like a metallic pen, as well as borrowing my wife’s Cricut heat press for the review. |
The heart of the Cricut eco-system is the software – Cricut Design Space.
Cricut Design Space is for both your Windows or Mac, as well as for both iOS and Android if you want to send a project while on your mobile.
Cricut Design Space is where you can make use of the included 1,000+ images, 15+ fonts and 250+ ready-to-make projects and store them in one up to five collections you can create.
While there’s a lot you can do with the included fonts, images and projects – as well as the ability to simply go rogue and upload your own images and more; where Cricut seems to want you to go is their Cricut Access paid subscription model.
Cricut Access opens the door to a lot more in terms of resources and projects. Once subscribed you get access to 200,000+ images, 700+ fonts, 1,000s of ready-to-make projects and unlimited collections on their desktop Design Space. There’s also a handy 10% off for purchases through the cricut website.
It’s a lot of perks and you can check it all out for free with a 30-day trial, after which Cricut Access is priced at .99 per month, or 9.99 per year.
Once you’re set up, the sky is the limit in terms of imagination. There’s a bunch of card stock, vinyl and enough tools to get underway almost immediately.
I had only ever had a glancing experience with Cricut through my wife, and approached this as a fairly novice user, letting myself be guided by the software. Cricut has included a heap of tutorials to help load the materials and set things up for printing on your inkjet printer and then cutting it on the Cricut Joy 2.
The Cricut Design Space software has a lot of projects to suggest if you’re at a loss where to start. You can select any of the suggested options – or simply hit ‘+ New Project’ and you’re off and racing.
The actual design space can be a little limiting, but with some creativity and uploading your own images it can be a pretty easy experience to simply add elements to a project and then welding it together for a final ‘cut’ or Make.
The software does have limitations – specifically for me I found importing transparent images either as SVG or PNG files. The Design Space software uses an AI-powered background removal tool for uploaded images, which kept adding whitespace to my carefully created transparent image and no amount of arguing would convince it otherwise.
Still. That was one potential project and I’ve logged a ticket with Cricut!
So what did I end up making on the Cricut Joy 2?
I had a lot of fun with the Cricut Joy 2 making a birthday card for my son, putting his name on his Easter bag, I also made some stickers and temporary tattoos – which required firing up my inkjet printer. I also continued my wife and I’s project of labelling our spice jars.
I’m also working on a project on my 3D Printer to recreate a classic Action Bus Stop from around Canberra. I’ve already got the project to cut the decals for the old Action logo – if Design Space will let me use the transparent image.
The Cricut Joy 2 is an absolute blast for anyone wanting to get into die-cut crafting. The ease of use, setup and compact size and portability makes it a very attractive tool in and of itself.
Where Cricut has really won me over is with the Essential Bundle. The 9 price tag for a bundle that includes all the tools and consumables to get me up and running with projects without having to go to the store is an absolute win.
The included sample vinyl, card stock and included tools make it easy to just create, but there’s a whole eco-system of consumables and tools out there easily available at places like Spotlight, Officeworks, Big W, Harvey Norman or just online if you want to make more complex projects – your only limit is your imagination.
It’s not all fantastic with a lot of the fun projects, fonts and imageshidden behind the Cricut Access paywall at .99 per month, even if Cricut Design Space lets you do quite a lot with the basic tools.
The only other downside is that I had too much fun and now I need to think about upgrading to a full-sized Cricut like the Explore 5 – but it also comes in an attractive ‘Essential Bundle’ so I may be putting one in my shopping basket the next time I go for supplies.
The Cricut Joy 2 is priced at 9 and you can check it out at Spotlight, Officeworks, and BIG W.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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