As I have mentioned in a previous post I have been exploring ways to get my creativity flowing again read about here, as well as finding myself and remembering things that I enjoy doing. First one you can find here, and the second one here. One of those things is to put together my photos in a scrapbook and even though I have not been doing this for a few years, I wanted to get back to it. For a little while I had been subscribed to an art journal subscription and enjoyed doing this. The artist Jessi who created the monthly boxes, I believe, talked about how putting your momentos together in a book is considered Art Journaling. This reminded me of how much I have enjoyed doing this and how I still keep a hold of items from different things we have done over the years to put into books.
Well all of these thoughts lead me to remember people talking about die cutting machines and how I had been interested in these throughout the years, yet had never tried or looked into them before, so I felt like asking for one for my birthday a few years ago. After remembering about die cutting, I remembered hearing about the company Cricut and thought it was a die cutting machine company. While Cricut is a cutting machine, it ended up being a lot more than what I thought I was getting into. I received my Explore Air 2 for my birthday back in 2020 when we were shut up in our houses at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Upon receiving this new machine I realized it was not what I was thinking I was asking for. I will admit that I did not research a Cricut and the die cutting machines that I was expecting to receive. While Cricut came around and started out as a die cut machine that you used templates with, it has evolved into more.I became a little overwhelmed with how exactly to use the machine, what an svg was, where to find them and all the possibilities I had with this new machine.
SVG is a scalable vector graphic which is a graphic design that can be adjusted in size without losing quality. There are a lot of uses for SVGs even if I do not understand them fully.
Cricut has their own group of SVGs they have either made or someone else has made and given permission to use or sell on their application Design Space. You have the option to use these by purchasing individually or joining their membership of Access, which allows you to use most of their SVGs for one price a month or yearly. The standard subscription is $9.99 a month or $95.88 a year. They also have a premium subscription that is $119.88 a year. I have found this can be useful, but is not always feasible for everyone trying to get into crafting.
You can find people who sell their own designs or give them away, and most of them usually have a way for you to purchase a license to use their designs to put on items to sell. I have found that most of these licenses are around a ten dollar mark for each design you want to purchase and use. For some people this is not a big price to pay, but sometimes we need to spend a little less for various reasons and may have to find a way to save to purchase this license on top of the design itself. A few examples of people I have gotten some SVGs from would be Cori from Let’s Make Stuff, Hello Creative Family, Amy Romeu Crafts.
While I have looked for SVGs I have also looked for videos to watch to learn how to use the machine and all the things it does. One place to find learning videos is from Cricut themselves, either on their website or on YouTube under Cricut’s own account. I have watched videos from YouTube by Jennifer Maker and Makers Gonna learn that have been educational and taught me a few things. My favorite person to watch has been Mr Crafty Pants. He introduced me to a website called DesignBundles and the files that they sell usually come with a license to sell products with the designs on them, which can be a great help to someone who is on a limited budget, but is looking for a way to make some extra money.
Another site that is similar to DesignBundles is CreativeFabrica. This site also sells designs people have created or that have been created for the site. They also have with most purchases the license added on to be able to use the designs on sell-able products. A lot of times these sites give a promo code to some of their promoters that allows you to get the designs at a discounted rate. Both of these sites have a subscription that allows you to get a bigger discount on a lot of their products.
I do feel like Mr Crafty Pants has an easy way of teaching you to use a cutting machine and to upload SVGs. Within the last couple of years he co created a website called crafty.net that you can subscribe to for a monthly price of $9.99 or a yearly price of $107 and you even get the option to use the SVGs on the crafty site to sell products with them.
Each month DesignBundles does a discounted event where they have about 40 designs and bundles of designs for only a dollar. They do this on the last Wednesday of the month at 9AM pacific time and last for an hour. The last few months they have even added a Saturday one dollar event as well which they do at 3AM Pacific time. Both of these deals have different designs and bundles. I have not bought any designs from the Saturday event because I am usually asleep at that time, but have from the Wednesday one. At the end of the year in November instead of doing just the last Wednesday of the month they do a week-long sale with even more designs than normal. Although those designs have a limited amount and when they sell out of a design then they are just out. The subscription to their site allows you to be able to purchase after the hour long event is over if you were not able to get to it. They allow those with a subscription to be able to purchase for the next 24 hours. On top of having an extended time to purchase from their one dollar event they also have special subscription points you get monthly in order to purchase one of their special subscription designs that are only available to those with subscription points.
CreativeFabrica also sells some of the designs on their site for a dollar. From what I have found they do not have a set day for their deals, but you can be sent a message when new deals are ready.
I highly recommend these three sites for the needs of any SVGs. Both DesignBundles and CreativeFabrica also have things for other types of crafts. I started this post not only to let people know about the amazing ways to get good designs at an excellent price, but because I have also decided to become an affiliate of both DesignBundles and CreativeFabrica to help offset some of the costs of this blog. So be on the lookout for an easy way to get to their site from my site.
Let me know if you have used any of these sites, or if you have a recommendation for a new site that I can check out to find new SVGs. I am always on the lookout for new sites and new designs. While I am interested in learning to make my own I have not found a good site that I can learn from and I do not have excellent skills in drawing or such things as that.
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