Homemade markers for my Cricut

Hi there,

ok, most of you know I am a pretty frugal crafter.  If I can make it for cheap, I will.  I know, cheap isn't always better, but in this economy I guess I don't need the best.  Yesterday I showed you my inkpad holder for $2.  Today I am going to show you my homemade cricut markers.  I did purchase a pack of the black and brown ones a long time ago.  I must have had some extra money cuz I can't even use my michaels or hobby lobby coupon on cricut products.  Anyway, I did like them, but $15 plus for 4 markers is a bit steep for me.  Then came along the Cri-kits.  I think they are also very awesome. Still way too expensive for me at $30.  Well as I blog hopped, I saw someone taking those ittie bittie markers and putting those soft pencils grips around them and claiming they fit in the housing for your cutter.  Another site I saw she took fat short markers and took a lighter to them and melted down the plastic so they fit into the housing also.  All very cool ideas.  I read you could buy those markers at Staples and also Walmart, but I have had no luck finding them.  I was at the Dollar Tree buying the foam core for the previous project the other day, and found some tiny gel pens.  They looked cute and I got 6 of them for $1.  I had these in mind for another project I am doing so I picked them up.  Then I stopped at Michaels on the way home and found these little, skinny markers.  Wow, really?  They were $2.99 for a package of 10.  They are made by Creatology Art Supplies and come in red, green, baby blue, dark blue, orange, purple, pink, rust, yellow and black.  As I am writing this and looking at the package I see that they are double sided.  Fine tip and wide.  LOL  I was kinda wondering why they were double sided, but didn't really read the package.  Too funny.  Guess I gotta make another tutorial on the wide side and see how that works.  Anyway, back to my tutorial.  I brought them home and I didn't have any of these pencil grips.  Really?  With school age kids there were none to be found.  So, I adjusted again.  I had bought a roll of painters tape a long time ago because I read that you could use it like transfer paper for your vinyl.  Well, guess what?  Either I bought the wrong stuff or it just really doesn't work.  So I cut off a few strips and measured against my blade housing and taped around the markers until I thought they were fat enough.  Now came the hard part.  How far do the markers go into the blade housing?  I took a plain white piece of paper and layed it on my mat and using SCAL I wrote out a word and then proceeded to cut.  When I figured out the right depth, I took a sharpie and marked the painter's tape above the housing and viola.  My homemade cricut markers.  Now, I must say, they aren't as crisp as the cricut markers but maybe after I try the wide line that might be a different story.  I will let you know once I've tried it.  I truly am happy with the outcome though.  Not everything always needs to be so clean and crisp.  I then took one of those gels pens and tried the same thing and that worked soooo much better.  A very clean line.  I love it.  Here are a few pictures to kinda show you how they look.  I didn't write out the entire word in every color.  I just wanted to make sure that they depth was correct.  I will make a project and show you the results then.  I will also try the wide line and see if there is a difference.

These are the markers (double sided for fine and wide point) who knew.  LOL

Here is a picture showing some of the wording.  See how a line is drawn from one sections to another?  That got fixed after adjusting the blade depth.

Here is a closeup of the gel pen.  LOVE IT.

Well another frugal idea I got from blog hopping.  All in all 9 markers (cuz the 10th one was black and I already own black and brown cricut markers) 1 gel pen plus some painters tape cost me around .33 cents a piece.  Not bad huh?

Hope you enjoyed todays post and see you next time. 

As always, have a great day and god bless.