Yachter, you could buy a board at Lowe's and have them cut it into "blocks" for her if that's what she wanted to make. However, I would imagine she would be more interested in creating banners for her room, signs on cardboard for her door at home like "no boys allowed" or like Jeanne suggested she could make cards for friends or scrapbooks for her pictures. There are tons of ideas out there, I've seen those $1 wooden frames from Michael's decorated with scrapbook paper and then some words. I just did three square glass bowls for Halloween, I'll have to get a picture taken of them to show you. Another fun thing is to personalize water bottles, book bags, and note books. These are not inexpensive however because you have to buy the cartridges for the letters and shapes and those usually run around $30 on sale. Once in awhile you can find some for less. Luvs

Thanks for the reply, sboxx. I've been doing some looking around on the internet and think the deal at Costco is the way I'm going to go. You mentioned a good price from Walmart on the Expression, but I have to think that's for the machine only. At Costco, I would also be getting 3 cartridges, which I'd have to purchase anyway because what good would the machine be without cartridges? Also, in looking around and reading reviews on several sites on many of the different Cricut products, I found out about a site that seems to have the best prices on cartridges. It's cricut-central.com.

Sharon, using my Cricut has been one thing I have been trying to perfect. A few things that I have learned: Cut at a slow speed with a deep blade. Pressure should be set at about 5 and your blade should be at 6. I tried cutting the fabric with just my stabilizer pressed the back of the fabric and ran into problems. Recently took a lecture on using the cricut for applique and learned that if you press a shet of freezer paper to the right side of the fabric and have your stablizer on the back of the fabric it works much better. Went home and tried it and it worked PERFECT!

I make stencils out of it, it is great.... You CANNOT use a coupon at either Michaels and Hobby Lobby for any Cricut products... Unless they have them on sale then you get sale price. But never a coupon..If they let you use it they should for everyone. Cricut does alot of things cuts fabric, chipboard,etc. Here is a site that has wonderful prices.. I got my expression the big one at Christmas free shipping for 199.00 their cartridges ate 34.00 each on most all but the new ones and they are 54.00 each..www.customcrops.com