After hemming and hawing over an electronic paper cutter for over a year, I finally took the plunge and bought me one. Here's my new baby, the Silhouette CAMEO.
For such a long time, I wanted the cricut because that is all that I saw in the store and after finding no deals for black Friday, I decided to wait. Good thing that I waited because just as I finally decided upon purchasing the Expressions 2 machine, I discovered the cameo and I love it. I have boxes and boxes of punches right now and the thought of not having to replace boxes of punches with boxes of cartridges was enlightening. Doing my research, I learned that the cricut requires you to purchase additional cartridges in order to cut different designs and you are limited to their designs. I decided upon the cameo because I wouldn't have to spend oodles of money on cartridges and that I am not limited to their designs. I can create my own if I wanted. For me that would be the deal breaker.
The other major difference between the two is that the cricut does not require a computer to operate. It works on its own. The cameo does require a computer as an interface. If you don't want to lug around a laptop, then the cricut might be for you. I don't mind and would prefer using my laptop to create my images. The only time I need the cameo is to cut so I can sit anywhere, design and save the image to cut it out later if needed. I'd rather have my laptop verses carrying around different cartridges.
I was able to snag 96 free images right out of the box. 50 were already loaded in the software and there were 45 more online I was able to get for free. The last free image I snagged was the free image of the week. I'm off to a great start, being able to use it right away with no purchases. I love the "free" image of the week. I just wish I was downloading them while I contemplated the purchase. That would have given me a lot more images.
After selecting and resizing my images, it is time to cut. It looks exactly like a printer, but instead of ink, there is a blade (although, you could use pens in place of the blade to draw).
After the cut, I peeled the paper off the mat for my image cut.
Love it!
Now, you wouldn't think that I purchased this beauty at retail price, now would you? I did a lot of searching to find the best deal. This is what I did. I found a coupon code for 25% off a $100 purchase at ohmycrafts.com. When I went there, I noticed that the item was delayed in shipping due to high demand. I really didn't want to wait for who knows when to get my cameo so therefore, I went to fotobella.com (which had no wait time) where I emailed customer service to get a price match for the item. They verified the purchase price and sent me a link to purchase the cameo for the discounted price. It retails for $299, but was on sale at ohmycrafts for $269.99. After applying the coupon code, the price dropped to $202.49. The one bad thing is that you do have to pay $15 for shipping, BUT $217.49 was still the best price. I saved $52.50 AND I was able to get it in 3 days. Isn't that fantastic? Who'd thought you could price match over the internet?
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