Cricut: Borders, End Caps, Certificates & Bags - How cool!

I'm just listening to Duran Duran and playing around with my Cricut Expression.

I've had my Cricut for a while but never seemed to venture on to more than just the basics. Well, I've had the personal "baby" Cricut for a while, but trying to save paper I often reverted back to my Ellison, LOL. Then when I saw what the Expression could do - wow! ...so much more; I couldn't wait to get it with it's new bigger size and added features. Saving paper was one of them, LOL. -- But wait...some of those features my baby Cricut had and I just never knew until I saw it on a TV program. A little quick check on the baby one while I waited for my Expression to come in and lo and behold those features are there too....wow, the things you learn on TV, hahaha.

So, now I've had the Expression since hmmmm...I think January, and what, I've still only done the basics on this machine? Well, except once when I created a name out of chipboard for my daughter's dorm mirror, which it came out pretty good except I had to hand cut it out the rest of the way. I didn't learn until about 3 weeks ago about the deep cut blade --- duh! LOL. I though I could just repeat the cut 4 times and it would work, but it was still attached. Now I know better and I won't waste so much chipboard trying to figure it out. heehehee.

So, the set I was playing with is the one that comes with the Cricut - the Plantin School Book. In addition to the alphabet it has a few other tricks it can do to make your projects fun. :)

First thing I played with was the borders. They are pretty cool and there are a lot of them. I only have picture of one, but there 10 ways you can do the borders. This one is using the Tall Ball feature --- turns the grass into flowers. :)


Next thing I played with was the certificate. Not sure I'll have a big need on this one, but hey you never know. It has some pretty neat details I suppose you could use it to frame a picture on a scrap page pretty nicely. :)



Then, I played with the end caps. This is a great feature for book marks, name tags, gift tags, labels, and hmmm... probably some other things, but anyway... it's pretty cool. I just have a couple pictured here, but there are 12 choices total.


Finally, I played around with making the bag -- since I was just playing around I didn't really pick out a great color it turns out for my bag, but the bag itself was easy enough to create. One 12x12 paper makes you a 7-1/4 bag with marks so you know where to fold. Isn't it adorable? I actually cut that earlier border and put it on because I wanted to dress it up a little, but I think there is so much more dressing this bag could have. I love it! :) Then of course I stuffed it with CTMH cards. :)