This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

I mentioned in our post about our unboxing Cricut Explore Air 2 machine that I had wanted a Cricut machine for a longgggggg time.  

I’ve had it for a little while now and I thought it was the perfect time to explain some of the reasons why I love the machine and what it has allowed me to do.

Today, I want to share with you 5 reasons why I am absolutely loving our new Cricut Explore Air 2 machine. 

1 and 2. It has helped to break out of my anxiety shell and allowed me to be creative again

I think both of these, for me, go hand in hand. 

First, I do want to say that I don’t think I’ve been challenged like this in a long time. 

Two things I’ve vowed to do this year (if we are being honest, for the last few years) is to stop letting my anxiety get in my way and find a way to be creative again.

It’s funny because I think as adults, we sometimes get into this mundane nature of things that don’t allow us to step out of our comfort zone.  When we are being challenged, often times we just shut it down.  Like nope, not going to happen today. 

The Cricut didn’t come insanely easy to me at first.

I mean there’s a lot of moving parts and with my anxiety, it’s easy for me to shut down. 

Like shut all the way down. 

Forcing myself to figure out how to do a project and actually complete it, really took a lot for me. 

However, I feel like a better person and mom because of it.  I think that by pushing myself to do this, I am going to be able to push through other things easier and ultimately teach my kids that too.

3. It has allowed me to be creative again

Yall. Decisions decisions decisions. 

If you are a creative person then you know that decisions are sometimes amazing but also sometimes overwhelming.  

Do yall know how many fonts are in Cricut Design Space. 

How many colors of vinyl there are?

It’s actually pretty amazing there’s all these options.  It has allowed me to great really creative.  I could spend hours and hours just trying to pick out the best designs to add to my project. 

4. I’m able to create custom name projects for my family

Yall. My name is Larisha.  We gave our kid’s unique names too. 

I know from personal experience growing up that it really stinks when all your friends are getting gifts from the gift shop with their name on it and your sitting there like yup, never had anything with my name on it. 

Cricut Design Space and our new Cricut Explore Air 2 has made it easy to create custom name projects and gifts for me to make and give to my kid’s myself, and even my friend’s children with unique names. 

5. Being able to create gifts for others and decorate spaces in our house

One thing I was really hoping to do with our new Cricut Explore Air 2 was to be able to create gifts.  

For myself, for others, for my family.  I wanted to be able to decorate some spaces in our home, and I wanted to be able to make gifts for other people. 

I have absolutely been able to do that and it’s brought me so much joy. 

I love the idea of being able to personalize things, even if it’s something small. 

There’s so much joy in knowing that someone took their time to create you something amazing. 

If you have a Cricut Explore Air 2 machine, leave a comment below and let me know why you love yours. 

If you don’t and one of our reasons is why you want one, we’d highly encourage you to put it on your wish list 😉 🙂 

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

A few years ago, a local wood carver had made me an absolutely gorgeous hanging ornament that said, “Today I Choose Joy”. 

I absolutely loved it. 

After the holidays, I decided that instead of packing it away that I would hang it up where I would see it everyday as a subtle reminder. 

Being someone that lives with depression and anxiety, sometimes reminders like this can really help. 

When our oldest became old enough to read, she said she’d like something similar to that. 

I loved the idea of creating one for her on my own as an even more special little gift. And thought it would be great to hang in our girls room or put in their school room (we homeschool). 

So when we unboxed our brand new Cricut Explore Air 2, I knew that I would probably create that as one of my first projects. 

It seemed easy enough to make and I think using a fun shiny vinyl would be perfect for a little added flare without much work on my end since I still wasn’t sure how everything worked. 

I purchased some round wooden pieces that were holed and had rope to hang already.

The first thing I did was measure how big I wanted my word to be.  

Then, in Cricut Design Space, I found this already made image that was perfect for the look that I was going for.  Cricut Design Space has a ton of options for you to choose from that makes crafting a breeze. 

I knew that I didn’t want it to be two colors for my first project, so on the right hand side where it shows the cuts, I clicked the eye to delete one of the colors for Joy.  

What I was left with was choose has it was originally and the orange Joy.  I change the color to black just so I could see them together. 

The color doesn’t matter really in this case though, it’s just going to be whatever color vinyl that you choose. 

Since we are using wood, make sure to choose a permanent vinyl.  We chose a holographic vinyl. 

At the time we only had the smaller square mat, and this vinyl is longer, so we just rolled up one side and attached the other to the mat we had in order to cut.  This is great if you only have limited materials. 

Once it was printed, we used the weeding tool in order to get all the excess material away from the words choose and joy. 

We have found it easy to use transfer paper after removing the excess materials. 

In order to do that, we used the scraper tool in order to get it to move from the vinyl paper to the transfer paper. 

Then, we placed where it wanted it on our wood piece and again used the scraper to get it from the transfer paper to the wood. 

After ensuring that all the pieces were moved from the transfer paper to the wood, we carefully removed the transfer paper, repeated with the word choose and then viola, done!  We did decide to use mod podge to seal even more because …kids…they are rough! 

What we were left with was a gorgeous hanging piece of wall art for our kid’s school room that they will love!  

They got so excited for how shiny it was. And they have even asked if they can make some for their friends. 

These types of easy projects make learning how to use your Cricut machine fun.   Here’s another idea that we did on a plant that needs just words added to Cricut Design Space and only one color of vinyl.  

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

Before having kids, I was very crafty.  I would make blankets, paint, and more. There was rarely a time that I wasn’t being super creative doing something. 

After having kids, all of that sort of got put to the back burner, unfortunately. 

Every single year, I say that I am going to do more creative work.  Yes, I know having a website is creative, but it’s not the same. 

I didn’t want something that felt like work, I wanted to be able to sit down and really create things again. 

Here we are though with a 7 and a 4 year old and I still haven’t. 

Insert: Cricut. 

When Cricut reached out to us to see if we wanted to work together, I wish you could have heard the squeal coming from my house.  Maybe my neighbors actually did. 

I felt like it was the perfect opportunity to be able to combine my love of writing with my desire to get back into crafting and a creative space.  

And that is exactly what happened. 

See us unboxing our new Cricut Explore Air 2 and Easy Press

I had never had any type of machine like this even though it had been on my Christmas list for probably the last 3 or 4 years.  I always made excuses why also things should come before it. 

Read: I always put other things before my desire to craft again. 

I always say that part of that was my postpartum depression and subsequent realization that I have more than just postpartum depression and anxiety and it is something that will likely affect me the rest of my life. 

It’s taken until now to realize that one of the ways I can help myself with my depression is to get back to something I have loved for a long time and for me that’s crafting again. 

Why the Cricut family of products make for a great intro into crafting

I will completely admit that when I first opened the boxes and started looking around that I was completely intimidated. 

Oh. My. Gosh. 

There are so many things to learn. 

Full transparency: It hasn’t been exactly easy.  There are a lot of things to learn. 

The reason that I think the Cricut family of products (specifically the Explore Air 2 and the Easy Press) are a great intro into crafting is because there are a ton of resources available through Cricut to make sure that you create the perfect project every time. 

I remember being intimidated about where to even begin but through their resources and tutorials it has made it even more easier to figure things out. 

Don’t get me wrong, I have messed up and wasted material (from what I read this is common just in the beginning), but I quickly realized what I did wrong (hint: I didn’t read all the tutorial instructions). 

But overall, I have started having a lot of success with projects that I feel like I can start moving onto even more ideas! 

3 Tips for your first Cricut project 

1. Pick an easy project. Something that is one color, with one cut.  Like labeling a canister in your kitchen.
2. Have a weeding tool available. If it did not come with your machine, I recommend this being a first purchase. 
3. Use Cricut Design Space to chose something that is already designed for you instead of making something yourself. 

Once you get the hang of things you can continue to create more and more projects with a harder learning curve, like layers or multiple color cuts. 

Did you recently get a Cricut Explore Air 2 or an Easy Press?  Leave a comment below and let us know what you made! 

PS…Can you comment below and let me know if it’s normal for my space to look like this once done a project LOL!