Cricut Maker 4 review

I joyfully retired my scissors, glue and felt-tip pens some time at primary school. Maybe it’s because I’m left-handed and suck at cutting things. Whatever the reason, I generally avoid those sorts of activities like the plague.

Still, I like to be across all consumer products in my job, and when the opportunity to review the Cricut emerged, I jumped at the chance to give it a go. I was rubbing my hands together in anticipation of writing a scathing article. Turns out, I was wrong. I love this gadget!

What is a Cricut Maker 4?

Pronounced ‘cricket’, the Cricut Maker 4 retails for $800 and is marketed as a smart cutting machine. It looks and works in a similar fashion to a printer. It draws material into the device and, depending on the tool you’ve inserted, cuts, scores or draws designs and lettering with an inserted pen.

To use the Cricut, you need to download the proprietary Design Space app to your phone or computer. This transfers your designs and ideas from digital to real life, cutting or drawing on loads of different materials (claimed 300+), from paper through to leather.

Does it just sound like a fancy pair of scissors and a pen to you? I thought so at first glance. But the precision of the Cricut takes it from generic to high-end crafting. It’s not the kind of scrap booking that ends up hidden in a cupboard. The Maker 4 spits out the sort of stuff you’d be proud to show off.

Step 1: Making cards

There’s a running joke in my family about my ability when it comes to making cards. One memorable birthday, I gave my mum a card with just ‘Happy Bir’ scrawled in biro across the front – I’d run out of steam and moved to something else that tickled my fancy.

The Maker 4 allows me to get creative and avoid the donkey work I don’t enjoy. I can use the Design Space software to design my own birthday cards or use the pre-existing designs within the Cricut Maker 4 app. (A subscription called Cricut Access provides access to these designs.) Or I can buy individual designs.

I’d recommend new owners sign up for a free 30-day trial. The trial walks you through different designs and helps get you schooled up with using the app and Maker 4.

I selected a rather fetching cat card from the app and set myself to work. The step-by-step instructions made it easy. I knew I needed to load the pen, the cutting tool and find two different colours of card.

My first task was to stick one piece of card to the Cricut Mat. This is just an extra sticky mat that holds whatever you want to cut in place while the machine does its work.

Once everything was secured, I pressed the start button on the Maker 4, and the machine whirred to life. In less than a minute, it had cut the card to size, cut out balloons, drawn a cat and balloon strings and scored the card fold. It’s really entertaining watching the Cricut at work.

Peeling the worked-on card off the Cricut Mat takes a bit of patience because you don’t want to rip your creation. I then repeated the process for the second different-coloured card. Now, all I needed to do was glue one piece of card to another.

What I was left with was a card I’d be happy to give someone. Heck, I’d be happy to sell it to someone! By upping my game, I might soon be able to shake the long-held reputation of being a rubbish card maker. It was a big tick for the machine, but I was keen to move to the next level – fashion design.

Designing T-shirt prints

Many moons ago, I took a holiday in Thailand. At a market stall, I saw a T-shirt displaying a grizzly bear pushing a shopping trolley. I had to own that shirt. Alas, my giant frame was too big for the sizes in stock. I had to walk away that day, sans bear, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Upon learning that the Cricut can easily chop designs out of iron-on vinyl, my heart leapt at the thought of recreating my own shopping bear. The Design Space app couldn’t serve me what I wanted when I searched for “Bear goes shopping”, but I’ve dabbled enough in ChatGPT and generative AI to know how to solve that problem.

Several iterations later, I had created my own one-of-a-kind bear design and was ready to make it into the fashion statement of the century.

The process of uploading my design into Design Space was easy enough, though it was still a degree harder than the previous card-making exercise. I resorted to watching a bunch of YouTube clips until I felt confident to give it a go myself. The main thing you need to do with your own designs is mark the negative space you want removed from your design in the app. This was a fiddly process, but it really only took about 10 minutes.

The next stage involved attaching the vinyl to the Cricut Mat and letting the machine loose to cut out the design.

Following that was the fun task of picking out the bits I didn’t want to iron onto a shirt (Cricut calls this “weeding”) while trying to leave the fine hairs of the design in place. This is a weirdly meditative part of the process. I was at it for about 45 minutes. I didn’t get everything, but it was close enough.

The next part was more trial and error. I needed to iron the print onto my T-shirt and peel away the backing plastic. This took a couple of goes to make sure the edges stuck. It’s one of those cases where the more you do it, the better you get.

I was so pleased with the final result. My very own custom T-shirt, designed by me. Well, ChatGPT did it, but I entered the prompts and put the design on the T-shirt.

That was two craft projects completed with minimum fuss. I had done something I’d never tried before and was very proud of myself.

Summary

The Cricut Maker 4 can be complicated and convoluted if you want it to be. Or you can just use it to make basic cards and craft activities. No matter what you choose to make, it’ll be made precisely, quickly and with minimum fuss.

Is it an expensive pair of scissors? No, it’s much more than that.

I was prepared to scoff at this thing. But it’s actually added something to my life that I didn’t have before, and I really enjoyed it. I’m already picturing a future where I climb into projects with my son, and we carry them through from conception to completion.

Is the Cricut Maker 4 perfect? No. There’s a monthly fee of $14.99 to have access to all the designs in the Design Space (or $149.99 annually, which makes for $12.50/month). If you plan on using it a lot, that can work for you. Otherwise, you might want to learn to exploit the free software side of this device and dip in and out of the subscription model when you see fit.

The other downside is the upfront costs over and above the $800 Maker 4. The accessories are expensive. I wanted to make one particular card design but needed a “Scoring tip” to do so. It cost $75 at Spotlight, so I chose another card design that didn’t need that tool. But if you really want to get into things, be prepared to pay.

If you don’t think you’ll use it a lot, then don’t buy one. If you know you’ll get drawn into the system and craft till your heart’s content, then I say go for it.

Once you have the hardware, it’ll make you an easy person to buy presents for. If someone bought me the special mug kit to go with my Maker 4, I’d be stoked – and it’d be novelty mugs as gifts all round.