DIY Fashion Tweaks with Cricut Machines

If you are fully immersed into fashion you might have someday dreamed of being a fashion designer of your own.

Well, chances are you didn’t fulfil on that dream, and perhaps you don’t really want to devote your life to it.

However, you could still enjoy a little bit of design on your own, perhaps in smaller, DIY projects that won’t become a career choice.

A perfect choice for something like this would be the Cricut Machine!

What is the Cricut Machine?

If you haven’t heard of the Cricut, it’s a cutting machine thats relatively inexpensive and targeted towards the home/consumer market.  In the past cutting machines were usually industrial pieces of equipment that were very expensive and wouldn’t make sense to use at home.  The Cricut came on the market some years ago and filled a need of home crafters that wanted/needed a way to make digitally precise cuts in different materials.

How Can They Be Used?

It can be used for a wide variety of applications.  The truth is, there is no real limit, just what you can imagine.  Obviously its not going to be used for factory level processes and pumping out 10,000 shirts or dresses, but it can be used in various combinations and with various materials to create a whole array of different possibilities.

Materials include wood, rubber, vinyl, paper, and yes, fabric.

If you are wanting to use a cricut machine for fabric and other fashion related projects, you’ll need to grab the  Cricut Maker or the Cricut Explore Air 2.  Both of these can cut fabrics nicely.  But it doesn’t have to stop there, fabric could just be one factor of your craft.  You could combine fabric and wood to create ornaments.  Or fabric and vinyl prints to create specialty t-shirts and other apparel.

The Cricut and other printing/cutting machines can really open doors for those that want to flex their wings in terms of creativity, but aren’t necessarily great at drawing or cutting/crafting by hand.

How to Choose a Machine?

There are several models of the Cricut available, as well as competing brands like the Silhouette Cameo or even cutting machines by Brother, the famous printer brand.  You should do your due diligence in terms of research to make sure you spend your money wisely.  Of course there are plenty of resources online to help you make the decision, such as this list of the best cricut machines by CuttingMachine.Reviews, as well as breakdowns of the specs and comparison of each model on Cricut’s website.

At the end of the day you may want to start small (with some of the beginner models) if you aren’t very experienced with cutting machines, scrapbooking and crafts in general.  If you’ve got a bit of history in this niche, then go all out.  The difference in price from the beginner and advanced models is up to a couple hundred bucks, so might not be the biggest purchase decision ever.

How to get Inspired?

Now that you’ve gone ahead and educated yourself on the best machines for your interests, researched the model specs and prices, and made a purchase, now where to go from here?

Well thankfully the scrapbooking/crafts segment of the Internet is positively booming with free content for you to check out.  Just on Youtube alone, there are hundreds of different bloggers and crafters that are putting out really quality DIY and instructional videos.  We’ve gone ahead and pull together a few for you to check out:

Maker’s Gonna Learn – Youtube channel all about DIY makers and crafts.

Karley Hall – Video dedicated mostly to Cricut and other crafts.  Very detailed instructions, perfect for beginners.

Crafting Princesses – General crafting videos, with lots of videos on how to leverage Cricut and cutting machines.

To get you started, here is one of our favorite videos for beginners: