More on my Cricut Craft Room Review

Just a little follow up to my post about the Cricut Craft Room.  I brought my laptop up to the craft cave and started linking all my cartridges.  After you log in you have to connect your Cricut and insert the cartridge, follow the prompts for about 4 clicks and it's done.  On to the next cartridge, over and over again.  If you have a boat load of them like I do, this is going to take a while.  I got about half way through mine before my attention span wandered.   

I'm hoping that once they are linked, I don't ever have to load the cartridge again to cut from it.  The existence of digital cartridges makes me think that will be true.  But we'll see. 

When looking for your cartridge in the long, long list of ALL Cartridges, they are alphabetically listed, but if you own one designed by Teresa Collins, you'll find it under T for Teresa rather that C for 'Chic and Scary'.  Duh.

One very odd thing is happening.  If you own a Cricut you probably have the 'George and Basic Shapes' cartridge.  This was the one they gave away for free when you bought the Cricut during its first 12-18 months on the market.  When I bought my Expression, they gave me 'Plantin Schoolbook'.  I had to buy the 'George' font separately.  No big deal.  I only mention it because 'George and Basic Shapes' is likely the most owned cartridge they have and I am not able to LINK it.  I've tried it twice now, and both times it hangs up.  I guess Provo Craft still has some bugs to work out of their Craft Room...

More to come as I get them all linked and start to play. 

Updated as of 2/16/2013

Just some more things to note as I've completed linking my cartridges started to cut from the Craft Room

HOLD THE PHONE - don't remove your Design Studio software just yet folks.  I've got a number of projects that I built using DS.  They are saved on my hard drive as .cut files.  I tried to import them into the Craft Room today and it was a total fail.  I updated my DS product from the Cricut.com Support page and took yet another firmware update, but no go.  When I want to cut those again, I'll be heading back to DS to do it. 

I have another cartridge that Craft Room will not let me link.  Pagoda will not link with the Craft Room, telling me a rather unhelpful message "This cartridge cannot be linked.  It has been changed".  What the hell does that mean?  I've never used it and yet somehow it's changed?  I guess when I want to use those images, I'll be heading back to the old Design Studio software.  Since I had to take another firmware update today I tried to link 'George' again.  Nope, still a no go on that one. 

While you are cutting from the Craft Room - forget trying to do anything else with your PC.  It takes total control of your computer while it's cutting.

The interface was pretty slow.  I filled a 12x12 page with 3" horse shoe shapes.  I wanted to move them away from the edges a bit more.  I was able to do it, but the response time was slow.  This is probably a function of my Internet connection.  When I am upstairs, the signal from my router in the basement is OK, but not like it is when I'm on the first floor.  Something to consider if you don't pay for maximum speed from your service provider like I do. 

As it turns out - I was correct when I said that linked cartridges never have to be loaded into the Cricut again as long as you use the Craft Room.  However, you have to have one cartridge loaded for the thing to work.  It can be any one.  Since 'George and Basic Shapes' was in my error pile, I used that when I cut shapes from '3 Birds On Parade'.

If I had to give the Craft Room a grade right now, I'd give it a B-.  (see my next update below)

• I like access to digital images, not having to buy cartridges that take up space in my craft cave will be great. 
• I like not having to load the cartridges any more.  It means I can move all that I already own to boxes in the basement rather than on the shelves in the cave.  (except of course those two I can't link...grrrr)
• But since I can't use my .cut files from Design Studio in the craft room, that is a big negative.  And, this will make me keep my cartridges on the shelf rather than in that box in the basement.  Provo Craft has GOT to figure out a sync between DS and the Craft Room.  I tried to use 'Cricut Sync' but it failed as well. 
• And, with two cartridges unable to be linked, I can only asuume there are others out there like that, and the only reason I don't know about them is because I did not buy them. 
• Moving the images around on the page is slow.  If you are using an irregular shaped paper, like scraps, it is not a smooth click and drag.  You can do it, but you have to play with it. 
• The way the Craft Room depicts the different layers on a given image makes it SUPER easy to get everything the right size.  Each layer is a different color and they are all shown on the same tab.  That way, if you are trying to cut and orange coat to fit your brown scarecrow, you can actually lay the coat over the scarecrow and size the coat right to him.  When you cut, it cuts one layer at a time and shows you where they are on the page.  Nifty. 

UPDATE #2 - 2/18/2013

I've never been one to give up, so I started poking around on the Cricut site and found in the FAQ's the trick to converting your .cut files from Design Studio to project files you can use in the Craft Room.  All you have to do is open them in DS and save them again as .gypsy files.  Then the Craft Room will let you upload them.  Yeah!  Apparently the update I took the other day is what let's me save them as .gypsy files.  Who knew?  Since there is a way to convert, I have to raise my grade of the Craft Room to a solid B+. 

I've been playing with one of their digital valentines I bought for $1.78 the other day.  It's going to be an Easter card when I'm done with it. It works quite well now that I have the hang of layering.  I will say, it's a bit tricky when you resize the card.  I was shooting for A2, but had to go a little bit bigger to make it look reasonable.  I think the card is optimal at A6 or A7, but again, I made it work.  It will fit in Martha Stewart's A2 envelope just fine.  Hers are designed larger because she assumes you will have chunky embellishments to account for.  Way to go Martha!  You know us so well. 

I must have missed a memo...

I've been a Cricut owner for about, oh, I don't know, say, 6 years give or take.  I own the 'Expression' machine and have over 65 shape and font cartridges.  I also purchased their Design Studio software which at the time was another $40 or something like it. The software allowed you to connect your Cricut to your computer and use the computer's monitor to design just about anything you could ever want to cut.  Saving your work into .cut files makes it ready any time you want it.  Periodically, as you purchased more cartridges, you had to update your DS product to recognize them. This was no big deal, just surf out to Provo Craft's website and download what you needed. 

About a year ago I went looking for an update to my DS software.  Provo Craft had TOTALLY revamped their website.  And for the most part it was a total fail.  There was no DS information ANYWHERE on the site.  And most of the links to ANYTHING threw an error.  I went out to the message boards and quickly found I was not the only one missing their DS updates and pretty much giving Provo Craft the finger for leaving their Cricut site such a mess.  Fast forward another 6 months (yes, that's how long it took them to clean up their mess) and someone finally found and posted on the message boards a place to update your DS software.  Whoo HOO!  Off I went!

Provo Craft also had this product called Gypsy - a hand held device that was essentially the DS software with all the cartridges already loaded. I never saw the reason for that product as the design window on it was SOOOO small as to make it downright silly. Why buy a Gypsy when I can run DS on my 17" HD laptop?  In my mind, the only reason to buy the Gypsy is if you took your stuff to the local crops and didn't want to carry cartridges or your laptop.  Me?  I never do that, so yeah, the Gypsy was silly. 

I started getting email for something called 'The Cricut Craft Room' at about the time the 'Imagine' product hit the market.  (The 'Imagine' product allows you to also color anything you want to cut, while the 'Expression' machine just cuts.)  I had no plans to purchase the 'Imagine', as coloring has never been my thing.  So, I pretty much ignored the email coming out of Provo Craft related to 'The Craft Room'.

Well...duh.  This past weekend I finally put two and two together and came up with four.  Yup, that's a little over a year it took me folks.  The Craft Room IS the WWW equivalent of Design Studio, which is now defunct.  If you have a copy, it still works, but they are not updating it any longer.  Instead, they have a thin client version of the product that you download for free from The Craft Room tab on the Cricut.com home page.  You will probably have to update the firmware on your cutting machine.  I did, and it was not a big deal.  Just follow the directions that pop up as you load the thin client. 

Once I got it loaded, there it was, the new and improved version of the Design Studio, hence forth to be known as The Craft Room.  Yeah!  You mark the cartridges you own by clicking the LINK button.  (You have to have your cutting machine connected to do that, which I thought was a minor annoyance.) Once you get all of yours linked, you can then design just using what you already own, or if you are shopping for something new, switch to ALL Cartridges and start taking a peak at what you might want to buy.  (Gypsy used to let you do this too, but that small window just made it nuts.) 

Using The Craft Room is a FABULOUS way to preview ALL the shapes on a cartridge so you can be sure you really want it.  Cartridges can now be purchased digitally or actually.  Although, they are discounting the digital versions by about $10.  And many of the older cartridges are no longer available.  You can only get them digitally. 

There are also a number of the full cartridges broken up into smaller sets.   Lets say you liked the haunted house from the latest Halloween themed cartridge, but the rest you could live without.  You can now buy just the image files for the haunted house.  These are ALWAYS purchased digitally and become available (or, are LINKED) in the Craft Room as soon as you get your receipt.

I haven't tried this but I believe any digital cartridge or image you purchase from The Craft Room is stored in the Cloud, so you can access it from any computer that has the thin client on it.  You log in with your Cricut account/password and, BOOM!  Off you go.  If this is true, then when you go to a crop, all you need is one computer and one Cricut and the whole room can cut all night long.  If I'm right about the cloud thing, when Andrea or Lynn want to borrow something I own digitally, I can just give them my account ID and Password and they can cut. Of course, if they want something I have on a cartridge, we'll still have to swap the old fashioned way. I don't see a way to 'convert' from actual to digital - although - it could happen just by LINKING them. If Provo Craft were smart, that's how it would work.  I'll have to play around a bit with some friends and see what happens.

Other cool things about The Craft Room:

• There are Craft Room exclusive images.  These cost between $1 and $10 depending on the number of images in the offering.  Those email's I've been ignoring announce the new exclusives. 
• Each week you get to cut something for free for the full week.  This week, the Extreme Font is available in The Craft Room to cut at your disposal until Saturday at midnight, at which time something else will be free for the cutting.
• Seasonal sales on images - this week you can get a host of Valentine image files at a discount.  Something that would cost you $1.99 is now $1.47.  Every little bit helps.