Owning a Cricut Personal Electronic Cutter manufactured by Provo Craft gives you the ability to cut almost any letter or shape from paper, fabric and more. The machine requires that you use branded cartridges, however, and building a substantial collection of cartridges can be expensive. One cost-saving measure is to share cartridges with your crafty friends. You can always lend cartridges to one another, but here is another way to share your cartridges if you’re all in one place. If you have a Cricut Gypsy, you can link all of your cartridges with the device, bring it with you to craft events and share your whole Cricut library with your friends.
Purchase a Cricut Gypsy. The Gypsy, which retails for around $200 as of 2011, is a portable device that allows you to design with any Cricut cartridge and cut on any machine without having the actual cartridge with you. The Gypsy comes with the capability to design with all available Cricut cartridges, but will only cut images from cartridges that are linked to the device.
Link your cartridges to the Gypsy. Attach the Cricut Link Cable to the machine and place a cartridge in the dock. Click on the Menu or Cricut App button on the touch screen and then click on "Link Cartridge" to add your cartridge information to the device.
Bring the Gypsy with you when you attend a scrapbooking event or go to a friend’s home to craft. You’ll need the device as well as the USB cord to connect it to a Cricut machine.
Design the image you want to cut on the Gypsy screen. Attach the device to the Cricut machine and press "Cut" to cut your images.
Warnings:
- Cricut cartridges can only be added to one Gypsy at a time. If you add a cartridge to your device, you cannot add it to a friend’s.