Cricut Joy Complete Guide

Do you have a Cricut Joy? We love these Cricut machines! They are small but mighty. This Complete Guide to Cricut Joy will tell you everything you need to know about them.

If you’re thinking about purchasing a Cricut Joy or have one and just want to learn more about it, this is the post for you. We’ll talk about everything it can and can’t do and give you ideas for making the most of it.

Cricut Joy: A Complete Guide

The Cricut Joy is a small compact cutting machine. It’s a great option for people on the go or those with limited space in their homes. If you’re going camping or will be traveling a lot, this is a cutting machine that you can easily take along with you. At home, it’s easy to take it to any room you want. You can even use it while watching TV. The size of the Joy is one of the biggest advantages of this particular Cricut machine.

The Cricut Joy is so small and lightweight that you can easily hold it in the palm of your hands. The machine itself measures about 8 1/2 by 6 inches and is 75% lighter than any other Cricut machines, weighing only 4 pounds. If you’re traveling, you can even fit this machine into your carry on bag!

The Joy is a great entry-level machine. It’s perfect for the person who really has no crafting experience and isn’t sure how much they want to make or for using more for projects around the house, than for general crafting. For example, I could see this being something purchased by people who are doing a big home organization project – making vinyl decals for organizing their closets and so on.

It’s a perfect machine for card-makers too. In fact, card-making was one of the things Cricut had in mind when they designed the machine. You can even purchase a separate card-making mat and greeting card supplies for it.

What Can You Do with the Cricut Joy?

The Cricut Joy makes it possible to cut single designs up to four feet long and repeated cuts up to 20 feet long with Cricut Smart Materials. The cutting space on the Cricut Joy is 5.5 inches wide.

With Smart Vinyl, you don’t even need to use a mat. Smart Materials come in vinyl, iron on, and labels and are available in 10 and 20-foot rolls.

On top of its ability to cut, the machine can also draw and write on a variety of popular materials such as iron-on, vinyl, and the Cricut Infusible Ink. Personalize everyday items with the ability to make custom stickers, decals, labels, and more in less than 15 minutes.

There is no USB connection so you will need to use the Cricut Joy with Bluetooth. When it comes to materials, you won’t be able to cut any thick materials with it. You will need to stick to these 3 basic materials: Vinyl, Paper, and Iron On.

What Comes in the Cricut Joy Box?

The machine itself
Blade and blade housing already inside the machine
Warranty information
Safety information
Get started guide
Sample of Smart Vinyl
Standard Grip cutting mat
Fine Point Pen, Black (0.4 mm) (specifically for Cricut Joy)
Power adapter
Free 30-day trial membership to Cricut Access (for new subscribers)
50 ready-to-make projects online

Size and Specifications

Compact 5″ x 8″ and less than 4 lb. size that sets up instantly and packs away easily
Accurate precision and speed of the company’s full-size smart cutting machines at 75 percent less weight and one-third of the size
Buttonless design with Bluetooth® wireless connectivity for designing and cutting
Still works with Cricut Design Space®, for Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android
Cuts over 50 different types of materials
Load-and-go sensor technology that facilitates automated loading of materials and detection of material length
Housing unit to hold blade or pen tools

Setting Up Your New Cricut Joy

It’s really quick and easy to set up your Joy. It only has one plug – this is an electrical plug to plug it into an outlet for power. There is no USB cord because the machine only works with Bluetooth. Your blade and housing are already installed for you.

You’ll notice there are no buttons on the machine. Everything is controlled through Cricut Design Space. To open the Cricut Joy, just pull down on the front panel.

Cricut Joy Materials and Accessories

In general, materials used for the Cricut Joy are not interchangeable with your other Cricut machines. We do have a few Cricut Joy hacks for using materials not specifically made for the Joy, but bear in mind, these involved some extra work on your part and are only possible with some materials.

Some of the materials that a Cricut Joy can cut:

Adhesive Vinyl
Smart Vinyl
Iron-On Vinyl
Smart Iron-On Vinyl
Cricut Joy Insert Cards
Medium Cardstock
Thin cardboard
Corrugated cardboard
Cricut Infusible Ink
Sportflex
Dry Erase Vinyl
Chalkboard Vinyl
Window Cling
Paper Thin Faux Leather
Paper including foiled, shimmer, sparkle, and others
Smart Label Writable Paper
Copy Paper
Construction Paper
Foil Acetate
Premium Vinyl such as frosted, pearl, mosaic, and holographic
Adhesive-backed Paper
and many more!

Cricut Joy Mats

There are only a few cutting mats available for the Cricut Joy. The cutting mats available are the StandardGrip and LightGrip in a 4.5 by 6.5 and a 4.5 by 12 inch size. In addition, there is the Cricut Joy card mat. Of course, you can also cut certain projects without a mat if you use Cricut Smart Products.

Cricut Joy Pens

The Cricut Joy pens are a different size than the other Cricut pens and cannot be used interchangeably.

Cricut Joy Blades and Tools

There is only one blade available for the Cricut Joy. It is a fine point blade and this blade and its housing are not interchangeable with other machines.

The only tool currently available for the Joy is the Cricut Joy foil tip. Again, this is not the same as the Cricut Foil Transfer Kit for the other machines and can’t be used interchangeably.

How to use the Cricut Joy foil tip

Pro tip: There are some adaptors available on places such as Etsy that can be used in your Cricut Joy to allow you to use tools such as the Scoring Stylus in it. We have not tested these out ourselves but have seen others get good results from them. If you use these while your machine is under warranty, however, and something goes wrong, you will void your warranty.

What Kinds of Projects Can You Make with the Cricut Joy?

You can make a wide variety of craft projects similar to the ones you can make with your Cricut Explore machine. This machine is not powerful enough, nor does it have the necessary tools available for making projects with thicker materials like the Cricut Maker can.

In addition, working within the size limitations of the machine, you cannot make very large projects without using a Cricut hack to work around it. The hack we use to work around Print then Cut size limitations can be used with the Cricut Joy as well. Of course, if this is something you’re going to do on a regular basis, it does mean extra work and you may want to consider investing in a Cricut Explore or Maker.

Which Cricut machine is right for me?

Cricut Joy Craft Project Ideas

More Crafts You Can Make with the Cricut Joy

If you have a Cricut Joy, you are going to love learning more about the Cricut Joy Foil Tip. This is such a fun way to add a metallic element to your crafts.

In today’s post, we’re going to show you how easy it is to use the foil transfer kit to add those beautiful metallic accents to your projects by walking you through a step-by-step tutorial on how to make this adorable tag.

How to Use Cricut Joy Foil Tip

The Cricut Joy Foil Tip is a really simple tool to use with your machine to expand its functions and capabilities. There is a foil transfer kit available for the Cricut Maker and Explore series as well. These machines have three tips with different thicknesses available to them, while the Joy only has one. The foil tip for the Joy is not interchangeable with the ones for the other machines.

Supplies we’re using:

Contents Of Cricut Joy Foil Transfer Kit

Cricut Joy Foil Transfer Kit which comes with the housing, tip, 12 foil transfer sheets, tape
Cardstock
Trim (suede ribbon)
Brayer
Cricut Joy

We’re also using our You Are So Loved tag cut file from here on Makers Gonna Learn.

How to use the Cricut Joy Foil Tip to make an Easy Greeting Card:

Creating the Design in Cricut Design Space

Foil Transfer Design In Cricut Design Space

Grab your cut file and import it into Space. Get it sized as you’d like for your project.

It’s important to take note that when you’re using a cut file like this and you go to the text to change it from a cut line to a foil line, Design Space will make it an outline of the letters. It’s a compound path and it can’t fill it in.

Fortunately, we have come up with an amazing Cricut hack for you to fix this issue! This tip will work with writing with your Cricut as well as foiling. To do this, we like to make the text really big so we can really see what we’re doing.

Continue Using Offset Tool Until Letters Are Filled In

Next, you need to choose Offset. Normally with Offset, we would move the slider so that it creates a larger area on the outside of the font, but for this, you need to create an “inset” by going in the opposite direction.

With that selected, you want to repeat that action to create another line inside the letters. Continue repeating this action over and over again until your letters are filled in. Select all of those Offset layers and choose Group. Size your text back down to fit on your tag.

With The Back Layer Of The Tag And The Text Selected Choose Attach

With both the back layer of the tag and the text selected, press Attach.

We repeated the Offset technique with the frame as well. Remember to enlarge it before applying the Offset. Sometimes, if it’s too small, it won’t apply it properly.

Cutting and Foiling your Tag

Once all of that was completed, attached, and resized as needed, we selected our Cricut Joy machine and pressed Make It. Be sure to select the option for cutting on the mat because you can’t use the foil transfer kit with matless cutting.

Simply follow the prompts that Design Space gives you from here. We began with the the circles as the hole reinforcements on the tag. When applying your cardstock to the mat, be sure to use the brayer to help it adhere well when you’ve got a mat that might not be as sticky as you’d like.

Once your Joy has measured the length of your mat, you will need to go back to Design Space and press Go. There isn’t a button for this on the machine itself.

Remember: You can only connect your Cricut Joy via Bluetooth. You cannot hardwire it to your computer.

Refer To Design Space For Where The Foil Will Be Placed

Foil Transfer Tips

When it comes to applying the foil transfer, we like to refer back to Design Space to get an approximate location for where it is going to be applied to the cardstock. Use the measurements given in Design Space and the markings on your mat so you know where to place the foil on the cardstock.

Get The Foil As Tight And Smooth Onto The Cardstock As Possible

Place the foil face-up on your cardstock and use tape to secure it. To get good results from the foil tip, the foil needs to be as tight and smooth on the surface of the cardstock as possible so be sure to really smooth it out as you tape it down.

Pro tip: if you run out of the tape they provide, use Washi tape instead.

Load the foil transfer tool and then load your mat into the machine. Once the foiling process is finished, DO NOT unload your mat. We do like to take the tape and foil off though, so it doesn’t get in the way of the cutting process.

Switch from the foiling tool to the cutting blade. Cut out your tag. Press Go in Cricut Design Space. Unload your mat after the cutting is complete. Flip your mat upside down and remove it from the cardstock – not the other way around! This helps prevent the cardstock from curling.

Cut out the backing piece for the tag (there is no foiling needed so it only gets cut out). With the final piece of cardstock, once again, follow the procedure outlined above to foil it and then cut it.

Assembling your tag

Assembly really couldn’t be much easier. We used our ATG gun to adhere the main pieces of the tag. With the Zig Glue Pen and our handy reverse tweezers, we glued the hole reinforcements on. Finally, we added a piece of ribbon to the top, tying it through the hole. So easy!