Matting on my Cricut

So I just wrote a small novel on the Cricut message board about this....I will copy and paste it here in a moment. I have A LOT of new things to post. I have my first ever lay outs, some super duper cute cards ect. As i mentioned my family was in town last week so I was a little MIA. We went to the zoo with the kids and made a big birthday party. It was a lot of fun and I have A LOT of lay outs to make from it. For now I will post my revalation about matting on my Cricut for scrapping. None of this applys really if you have DS or a G. I am planning to get a G for my birthday in a month (little does the DH know!) and since my birthday is on Thanksgiving I am hoping it will go on sale for the holidays OR find some amazing black friday deal on it (yeah right!)

About the matting- Basically I decided rather then going out and buying a new cutter for my photos I would just take a little time and make templates out of some basic images from my Carts and then use those to pick the mat sizes for my photos. I would be able to use center point for my photos on my Cricut without worrying about the people getting cut out.

I am going to scan a PDF of my templates and post them here for all to use. I used AE and SB- I think most people have AE since if comes with most Cricuts right?

Here is the post I put on the message board- by all means skip it if you read it already.

So I have only recently started useing my Cricut for actual Scrapbooking (I just ordered 250 pictures from Snap Fish- I am a little behind but I WILL catch up!) And I was working on how to make matting for my photos. I asked on this amazing board how others use their Cricuts to mat and I found that most people don't. They use other paper cutters.

So I started looking online at other cutters and found the one I want, and started collecting coupons to the various stores to get it (ACM and M) and then I thought "You know Rachel, you have a $250 cutter in your den, why are you buying another $45 item? Can't you figure out how to make the one you have work?"

So I did JUST that!

I went through the carts I have and found basic circles, squares, rectangles ect. Then I took some plain card stock, tan, white and black (I get it in 100 page packs from M for 2.79 a pack-much less then getting the cutter!) and made templates out of the shapes I figured would make good mats. I did them from 1/2 inch to 4 inches. I used mostly AE and SB. But I am going to keep going through the carts I have for more basic shapes to use. I ended up useing my templates on EVERYTHING I made last night (and I did not make any lay outs!) I was able to pick the side of a circle I wanted to stamp on before I cut it, pick the matting ect ect and not have to worry about trying time and time again to pick the right size.

And when I DO get my pictures from Snap Fish I will be able to use these templates and then put the photo in my E using center point to cut pictures.

I was trying to find a way to share these templates with everyone. My idea is to tape them on paper, scan them and make them into a PDF. The way you can print them up and cut them out and they SHOULD be true to size. I will test this out and post here when I get it up on my Blog. I would also be willing to make sets of templates for people and mail them out but I would have to charge a little tiny bit for that because its time and material.

Anyway this is a long post that I am sure no one will read but I felt it was time harness the real power of the Cricut and stand up to our right to not have to buy yet one more thing.

Let me know what you think and let me know if you have any Carts that you recommend I look at for basic matting shapes.