Cricut Expression vs Cricut Cake

I love my Cricut machine! For anyone that's never heard of a Cricut, I'll fill you in. It's a cutting machine that allows you to cut beautiful images on paper, cardboard, clothing, and a lot more! I have owned two Cricut machines so far - a Cricut Expression and a Cricut Cake. Alas, having two was too space-consuming and economically unsound, so I sold my Cricut Expression. I took it to a local Peet's Coffee Shop where I was meeting the buyer of my Expression, and there were many surprised and intrigued looks from customers all over. It's surprising how unknown the Cricut is, yet it's absolutely a life-changer! I'm officially hooked.

I have been playing around with it periodically. I would use it every single day but right now I don't have the time to use it as much. I've added a few more cartridges to my original Plantin School Cartridge. In addition, I've added a jukebox and the Design Studio Software to my collection. I am so glad these are compatible with my brand new Cricut Cake machine, because now I have the capability to cut both paper and food products! Yay! :)

Let me tell you a little bit about the Cricut Cake. I haven't used it much for its food-cutting purpose, but I will tell you it functions like the Cricut Expression. The two are essentially the same machine. The only differences between the Cricut Expression and the Cricut cake are the colors, the material that makes the Cricut Cake food-safe, and the housing unit. NOTE: This is very important if you want to use one machine for dual purpose. The Cricut Cake is a much better alternative than the Expression for cutting both paper products and food products. Why??? Well, for one the Cricut Cake is food-safe. Two, the housings for the Cricut Expression (both the green housing that came with the Expression and the blue deep-blade housing) can fit inside the Cricut Cake machine but not the other way around. YOU CANNOT USE THE CRICUT CAKE HOUSING IN THE CRICUT EXPRESSION, and this is the primary reason why I decided to sell my Cricut Expression for the Cricut Cake.

You might think the two machines will have similar blades since the instructions for the two machines are identical. I was quite confused by the pictorials on the Cricut Cake instruction manual because the housing included did not, in fact, look like the Cricut Cake housing unit that came with the machine. I don't know if the prototype for the Cricut Cake housing was supposed to be similar to the Cricut Expression housing and somehow they had to make new ones at the last minute. Or maybe someone at Provo Craft just messed up BIG-TIME by using the same instructions, but THE POINT IS THE CRICUT CAKE HOUSING AND THE CRICUT EXPRESSION HOUSING IS QUITE DIFFERENT.

So what's the difference between the housings? The Cricut Cake housing has a plastic cover that prevents food from entering the whole that the blade is inserted into. Furthermore, the Cricut Cake housing is much larger than the Cricut Expression housing, which is why it cannot fit into the Cricut Expression machine. You can use the Cricut Expression machine to cut food products, albeit you risk losing the warranty if Provo Craft were to ever find out. In fact, lots of other bloggers and Cricuteers (my own term) used the Cricut machines to cut food before the Cricut Cake even came out. Cheers to all those ingenious Cricuteers!

Oh, another point I wanted to mention about the similarities of the two machines is that the second version of Cricut Cake - the Martha Stewart edition - looks almost identical to the Cricut Expression. I guess a lot of consumers did not like the bright red color of the original Cricut Cake and so they decided to switch it up. I absolutely love the red color and it complements the red Kitchen Aid products very well.

Well, that's all for now, but stay tuned for I will post some future and past projects in the coming weeks!

Cheers!