Our opening times are as follows: Mon - Sat 9.30am - 5.00 Sunday 10.30am - 4.30pm Looking forward to your vist  x

Why should I buy a Cricut?

The Cricut is an automatic cutting machine. You don’t have to have any computer skills. By using the simple cartridges you can cut out thousands of shapes and fonts. The only thing you need to do is choose a font, type the text and push the start button and your machine will cut out your figure or text automatically. The only things you need are a Cricut, a Cricut cartridge (with key pad), electricity and paper. 

The cartridge and the key pad are linked to each other, so every cartridge comes with a key pad. On every cartridge you can choose from 250 designs and twelve different sizes. 

On a normal punch machine one cartridge has about a 100 shapes so you would have to buy 100 punches at an average price of £6.90 which would already make £690 worth of punches. The Cricut offers the possibility to punch these figures in about ten different sizes. Should you buy these different sizes in the store you would have to buy a thousand punches which would cost about £6,900. All of the punches can be punched in six different ways… so you would have to buy £41,400 worth of punches to be able to do the same as one Cricut cartridge bought  for £59.99! 

You can work with the thickest cardstock. 

The machine can be used for many hobbies: scrapbooking, card making, but also for making decorations, for instance on boxes. 

Half a cardstock page can be used. 

The different sizes vary from very small to very large. The small size is perfect to use for card making.

It is a perfect machine to use for demonstrations and workshops. 

At the moment, there are twelve different cartridges available (More online soon!), with storage bags, spare blades, cutting mat and so on. 

In short,

It is fast: in a matter of minutes you can cut an entire alphabet. 

It is an easy, user-friendly and compact machine. 

It is cheap: with the purchase of one cartridge you have access to 3000 different figures. 

It is fun: you can experiment endlessly with the machine’s possibilities. 

There is no other product like this available!

Find this instore here!

Everyone learns in science class that oil and water don't mix, so how do water soluble oil paints work then? And why can't you simply mix traditional oil paints with water?

Very basically, water-soluble oil paints don't contain water themselves; water is just what's used to thin the paints (instead of the turps or oils for traditional oils). This water then evaporates as the paint dries (just like the turps or oils would).

The 'trick' is in the manufacturing of the water soluble oil paint, which is formulated in a way that allows the oil paint to be mixed with water to form a workable paint (rather than the mess you get if you try to mix water and traditional oil paint).

Any canvas, canvas board, or paper that is designed or created for traditional oil painting can be used for painting with water-soluble oils.  If you want to prepare your own canvases, do so in the same way as would be done for traditional oil paints.

Although working with water-soluble oil paints is different to working with traditional oil paints, when it comes to varnishing the same 'rules' apply. You must wait until the painting is thoroughly dry before varnishing, not just dry to the touch. Allow at least six months. 

The varnish that should be used for water soluble oil paint is the same as would be used for any traditional oil painting. Do not use varnish made for acrylic paintings.

We stock Artisan Water Mixable Paints.