Design Studio - my review

Hi folks - I had so many things I could blog about today but I couldn't find my camera. Crazy! I did find my camera so I decided I'd tell you about Design Studio for the Cricut die cutting machines. For awhile I thought it was stupid and wasn't worth the 60-90 dollars it retails for but I kept seeing people use it and thought I'd try it out for myself. I did NOT pay full price. I won it off eBay for a LOT better price. In fact I get all of my cartridges off eBay and I haven't paid more then 30 for any of them (including Design Studio). They retail for 60-80 too. That is nuts!

Never buy retail! I only get anything if it is 50% or MORE- well craft stuff and clothing at least...

The things you can do with Design Studio that I like are you can weld shapes and make your own word art. Below I created a name and the word month from Opposites Attract cart. I tried to cut it out of chipboard with the deep cut blade - wasn't impressed. I was able to use multi-cut through the software but it still didn't cut all the way though.

Design Studio also gives you other creative options that my baby bug doesn't come with like flip, rotate and multi-cut. The big expensive ones have those features but the orginal bug doesn't so that helps to have those functions without the big price tag.

For this project I used my cricut and graphically speaking cartridge. Which reminds we of another pro or con (depending on how you think about it) which is you can see EVERY cartridges content not just the ones you have. You can't cut anything unless you own the cartridge but you can see if a cart is worth buying. This one I hadn't heard of a lot but it has great graphics especially for boys and I decided I would get my money out of it and....(have you guessed) won it on eBay.

You can also create borders but welding shapes - see the flowers? It is also nice to layout your design and the you can cut the different colors of paper to the right size and know where to put them. Like this:

Before I had design studio I would have put three different colors and filled the whole mat and had to cut three times and have a lot of curly scraps (from taking them off the mat) now I can control where they cut and can rotate the shapes. For example, the cricut usually cuts vertical so the YOUME cut would have been going along the side but I rotated it so it would cut horizontally instead and that saved me paper.

Here it is put together. So easy when you do it all at once. I ran the background through my cuttlebug with the dots folder.

I made this element to go on this page I am working on. I haven't finished it yet-obviously but I thought it was cute for this picture.

PROS

• Added functions especially for those with the baby bug
• More creative control over characters
• Ability to lay out designs on one mat
• Ability to see how shapes relate to each other without cutting first. I was able to find a square that wasn't related for the background and see if it was the correct size and adjust the size to become the background for my shape.
• Ability to preview carts and see which ones you will use the most but exploring their content prior to buying
• Flip, Rotate, weld and multi-cut
• Less paper waste because you know what and where it will cut before it actually does.

Cons

• Not as easy to use as Quark or other design programs (weld)
• There is not a shadow feature. It would be awesome if you could make a shadow for any shape with this software but you can't. I tried it manually and couldn't do it.
• Can see the value of every cartridge and want to spend more money

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