Xyron Creatopia Multi-Function Crafting Machine

by Xyron

Product Features

• Multi-function crafting machine fits media up to 12 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick
• Uses cartridges for cutting, laminating, embossing, and applying adhesive
• No heat, batteries, or electricity required; ideal for home, office, or classroom
• Includes cartridge with 25 feet of permanent adhesive; variety of accessories sold separately
• Measures approximately 10 by 22 by 8 inches

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 23 x 10.2 x 8 inches ; 13 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 15 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• Shipping Advisory: This item must be shipped separately from other items in your order. Additional shipping charges will not apply.
• ASIN: B002K62KVY
• Item model number: 34010500
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #69,844 in Kitchen & Dining (See Top 100 in Kitchen & Dining)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

With this multi-function machine on duty, crafting enthusiasts can let their imaginations run wild. The unit's generous size fits media up to 12 inches wide and 1/2 inch thick. To use, simply insert a designated cartridge and turn the handle to cut straight or decorative edges, to laminate photos or documents, to emboss scrapbook pages or emboss borders on greeting cards; or to add edge-to-edge adhesive (permanent, fabric, or repositionable) to items to make stickers, labels, and more. The machine can also cut shapes in paper up to 6-1/2 inches wide with leading dies. Best of all, it performs all these functions without heat, batteries, or electricity--making it a smart and safe choice for classrooms, office settings, or home crafting stations. A cartridge with 25 feet of acid-free permanent adhesive comes included. Accessories that can be purchased separately include various adhesive, laminate, and embossing cartridges, as well as five different cutting blade packs and a die press cartridge. The multi-function crafting machine measures approximately 10 by 22 by 8 inches.

From the Manufacturer

Xyron's Creatopia is a revolutionary machine which allows you to apply even edge-to-edge adhesive to a variety of materials, laminate, emboss, cut, and even cut shapes/emboss using dies from leading die press systems. All of this is done without electricity, batteries, or heat. Application changes are simple and quick. Creatopia is specially designed to accommodate a full 12-inch-by-12-inch scrapbook page, and objects up to a half-inch thick!

With this machine you can do all of this:

1. Apply even edge-to-edge permanent or repositionable adhesive to items up to 12 inches wide
2. Apply even edge-to-edge adhesive to fabric up to 12 inches wide
3. Apply two sided laminate to documents up to 12 inches wide
4. Emboss borders on cardstock and other thin materials
5. Emboss a full sheet of 12-inch-by-12-inch cardstock
6. Cut paper up to 12 inches wide to size or into strips with a variety of straight or decorative blades
7. Cut and emboss shapes into paper and other thin material with cutting dies and embossing folders from leading die press systems.

Creatopia comes with a 25-foot roll of permanent adhesive, and is easy to use. Simply insert your item, turn the handle and remove your item. Components are sold separately and are easy to load and unload. The crank handle and tray fold up for easy storage. The cut button on the back allows you to cut close to the edge of your item.

Whether you are helping your child with a school project, crafting with paper, fabric or other mediums, embellishing a home decor item, or preserving special life moments, you’ll wonder how you did it before Creatopia!

Creating with Creatopia

Creatopia, featuring four families of components, is the perfect all-in-one machine for each and every one of your craft, home, and school projects. Each component family is color coded, making it easy to organize and to identify at a glance. Everyone in your family can use Creatopia

Refillz

Your machine includes a 25-foot permanent adhesive cartridge. This is easily removed and can be replaced with the repositionable adhesive cartridge, fabric adhesive cartridge, or the two-sided laminate cartridge. All are acid-free. The Permanent Adhesive offers the strongest hold, and will adhere to even difficult surfaces. This is perfect for photos, paper crafts, scrapbooking, card making, ribbon, acrylic, chipboard, metal, and other three dimensional items. The Repositionable Adhesive is truly amazing, as it allows you to reposition items multiple times, and will not leave a residue on most surfaces. This works best on smooth surfaces. It is safe for windows, painted walls and doors. Test in an inconspicuous area before applying item to these surfaces. This adhesive cartridge is great for kid's stickers, school and home projects, scrapbooking, vellum, and photos. The Fabric Adhesive offers the easiest way to apply adhesive to textiles and ribbons for craft projects. It is repositionable with fabric-to-fabric use, but adheres more aggressively on smooth surfaces. It will not gum up the sewing machine needle. This is perfect for appliques, machine embroidery, book and album covers, home decor, and other craft projects. The Two-Sided Laminate is designed to preserve and protect documents, photos, and other items. Once laminated, you can trim the laminate to the edge or even cut through the item without experiencing peeling or separating. What a terrific way to preserve your family recipes, children's artwork, newspaper clippings, certificates, ID cards, and other important documents. You’re sure to come up with your own fun projects, too, such as making your own custom placemats.

Patternz

Creatopia allows you to emboss borders or small designs in 65-to-80-pound cardstock, permitting you to make beautiful cards and scrapbook layouts. Simply remove the adhesive cartridge and Refillz component, select the design you want to emboss, and insert the Border Patternz Starter kit. After clicking into place, insert your item and turn the handle. The Border Patternz Starter Kit includes the Floral Border Patternz cartridges. Additional Border Patternz cartridges are available in Dots, Hearts, Scallop, and Stars. More cartridges will also be released in the future, so be sure to keep watch to expand your crafting reach.

Cutz

Put away the scissors, because with Creatopia you can quickly and easily cut paper and other thin items up to 12-1/2 inches to size or into strips. Once you insert the Cutz Starter kit, you can select multiple Cutz cartridges to use at the same time. The cartridges lock firmly into place, and the blade is only exposed once they are locked onto the starter module. The Cutz Starter Kit comes with one straight Cutz cartridge, a Guide Wheel, and Stabilizing Bar. Available Cutz cartridges include additional Straight, Wave, Scallop, Deckle, Postage, and the Card kit, which includes one blade to score and one to perforate. For best results place your Guide Wheel halfway between the Cutz cartridge and the end of your machine.

Shapez

Why purchase a separate machine to cut die cuts/emboss when the Shapez component can turn your Creatopia into a die press? The possibilities are endless with Shapez, which can be used to cut shapes and emboss designs in paper and other thin materials up to 6-1/2 inches wide using dies and embossing folders available from other manufacturers. Shapez will be available in 2010, ready to assist you in all your die-cutting and embossing. It will let you use your Creatopia in even more exciting ways.

With so many ways to use Creatopia, the possibilities are endless. The only question is: what will you create?

Product Description

The Xyron Creatopia machine lets you emboss, cut and apply adhesive or laminate by simply changing cartridges and turning a handle. A die press cartridge is also available, adding die cutting as an additional feature of this amazing unit. Creatopia is the only machine in the craft marketplace that performs all these functions - and does it without heat, batteries or electricity. Its generous size fits media up to 12-inch wide and 1/2-inch thick. With just this one machine, you can emboss scrapbook pages, create embossed borders on cards, cut straight or fancy patterns, make shapes, or apply permanent adhesive, fabric adhesive, repositionable adhesive or laminate items up to 1/2-inch thick. With your creativity and imagination, you are sure to find hundreds of ways to use the machine to enhance your crafting experience. The creatopia includes 25-feet of permanent adhesive to get you started. There are many embossing and adhesive cartridges available, along with five different cutting blade packs to choose from. The Creatopia die cutting system works with other popular brands of dies for even more creativity. Adhesive and laminate refillz cartridges, patternz embossing, shapez die press and cutz cutting cartridges for the creatopia are sold separately and available on Amazon.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Versatile Crafting Tool for Cutz, Patternz, Shapez and more, December 23, 2009

By	Andrea L. Polk (Southern Oregon) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Xyron Creatopia Multi-Function Crafting Machine (Kitchen)

(What's this?)

I'm not a crafter or scrapbooker, but I am a mother who does the occasional project with her school-age daughter. I've never owned another crafting tool such as from the expensive Cricut line, and frankly, I was intrigued by a 'multi-function' crafting machine that doesn't use batteries, heat or electricity to get the job done, and I jumped at the chance to check it out for myself.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
"It's heavy and pretty big!" This could be considered portable, but I don't think I'd want to lug it around much, as with each function change you need a different cartridge such as the Xyron 3405-30-00 Creatopia Cutz Cutting Cartridge Starter Kit for cutting, and the Xyron 3404-30-00 Creatopia Border Patternz Roller Cartridge Starter Kit with Bonus Floral Cartridge for embossing, as well as the cutting and embossing cartridges that work with the starter kits for each. A buyer of this item would really want to have a space where they could use it and have ample storage for the cartridges that make it work.

"It's solidly made." I'm sure that with proper care this machine could be used effectively for all its muti-functions for many years to come. The Xyron Refillz (adhesives and laminates), Patternz (embossing), Cutz (cutting) and Shapez (die cutting - introduced in 2010), are all part of the Creatopia line that will be used to expand the possibilities of this machine. Each cartridge and starter kit that I received with my special Vine package were sturdy and milled to fit easily together for smooth operation.

"I could do a lot with this tool." The machine comes with a 25' roll of adhesive. I am already thinking of buying the Xyron 3402-06-40 Creatopia Refillz 2-Sided Lamination 40-Feet Cartridge to archive my child's school photos and awards and the Xyron - Creatopia Shapez - Shape Maker Die Press Starter Kit, COMING SOON when it's available. There are many cartridges that add to the versatility of this machine, and the bottom line: the cartridges you own MAKE the machine what you want it to be.

OPERATION: EASE OF USE
The directions that come with this machine are not great. Dare I say, for me at least, they were bad. I almost went to the Xyron site to see if I could find video tutorials, but after almost 2 hours of playing with the Cutz starter kit and the Patternz (embossing) starter kit, I finally figured out how to add and remove cartridges with ease and get the desired effect. I also learned how to position the adhesive cartridge to properly feed it through the rollers.

If you're thinking that I'm just bad with directions... I have built desktop computers from the ground up, and am always called by other members of my family to set-up home electronics. I think if there is one flaw in the Creatopia machine packaging, it's in the directions. Clear, concise, step-by-step instructions with photos that are bigger than a postage stamp would be a helpful reference when getting used to and setting up the machine for each new function.

Once you get past the 'how to do I put it together' thing, it's easy. Slide the cartridges you want to use into the machine until it locks the cartridge into place. Crank the handle clockwise as you feed the paper or fabric (up to 1/2" thick) into the machine.

VALUE
If you know what you want to do with the machine initially, you'll save yourself some money. The machine ships with 25' of adhesive and that's it. Starter kits for cutting and embossing will run between twenty-five and thirty dollars with limited options in each kit. You're mainly paying for the main cartridge that seats in the machine. The cartridges that expand each function run another ten to fifteen with 2 new options in each. Examples: Xyron 3404-33-00 Creatopia Border Patternz Border-Embossing Roller Cartridge, Stars and Xyron 3405-33-00 Creatopia Cutz Blade Cartridge Kit, Set of 2, Pinking.

Yes, this machine offers many handy functions in one portable, manually operated package, but the costs will rise quickly the more options you add to it. Not uncommon to specialty craft items, but something to be considered.

CONCLUSION
The Xyron Creatopia Multi-Function Crafting Machine allows you to cut, emboss, adhere, laminate and cut out shapes without heat, batteries or electricity. Items up to 12" in width and 1/2" in depth can be fed through this machine, adding to its versatility.

Cartridges that expand the uses of this machine are bulky and will need storage space. They are well made and serve their intended purposes well, but are somewhat heavy due to the rollers that are used. Starter kits are somewhat expensive, but needed to accomplish the tasks as promised by the machine.

Offerings for the expansion of this machine are somewhat limited at the time of this writing, but Xyron promises more options soon including a die cutting cartridge. Prices are reasonable when considering the 'multi-function' capabilities of the machine and other crafting tools on the market.

This machine will appeal to crafters who sew, scrapbook, or make cards, and also to teachers and parents who like to help their kids with school projects.

A good machine that seems to be durably built and full of promise.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Video Demonstration, January 8, 2010

By	Noname - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Xyron Creatopia Multi-Function Crafting Machine (Kitchen)

(What's this?)

Length:: 2:02 Mins

Xyron Creatopia comes with a permanent adhesive cartridge. All other cartridges must be bought separately. My video shows how the adhesive Refillz work. Basically, you can make stickers out of your paper projects or photos.

I like the adhesive cartridge, because it allows me to evenly apply adhesive to my projects without the risk of getting glue on the front of the photos or paper and without wetting and wrinkling the papers.

It does, however, take up lots of room, especially if you end up getting all the accessories.

Other accessories are repositionable adhesive, fabric adhesive, two-sided laminate, Patternz, Shapez and Cutz.

I will post separate video review demonstrations for Xyron 3404-30-00 Creatopia Border Patternz Roller Cartridge Starter Kit with Bonus Floral Cartridge and Xyron 3405-30-00 Creatopia Cutz Cutting Cartridge Starter Kit within the week, because they do not come with this package.

PROS:
+ versatile
+ easy to use

CONS:
- need storage space
- must buy additional cartridges to get the full benefit of this system
- poor instructional guide

UPDATE: I found that the permanent adhesive Refillz are not so great with certain types of paper. With construction paper, for example, the paper sometimes won't peel off without some of it sticking to the backing. I have to be extra careful not to rip the paper.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GIMME A C...CREATOPIA!!! YEAH!!!!, January 20, 2010

By	K. Dubose (Middletown, DE) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Xyron Creatopia Multi-Function Crafting Machine (Kitchen)

(What's this?)

I was pleasantly surprised to get the opportunity to experience and review the new Xyron Creatopia multi-function machine. I am a pretty serious crafter-I stamp, scrapbook, have a small card making business and make a variety of things for my children, family and friends. With that being said, I was not prepared for how large this machine is. When the box arrived, I was shocked to open it and see the Creatopia. I thought maybe a Nordictrack was in the box...okay the box was not that big, but it was pretty big. I own both the Cricut Expression 24-Inch Personal Electronic Cutting Machine and the Xyron 900 9-Inch Creative Station, and when placed next to the two, Creatopia is longer and wider than the xyron 900 which is to be expected and the Creatopia is the same length as the Cricut Expression when the handle is extended and slightly wider than the Cricut when closed. The Cricut is larger when opened and requires more clearing room for the paper when in use. The Creatopia is definitely a step up from the Xyron 900 and I can honestly say I LOVE that Xyron. I am thrilled with the increased paper capacity. I often wanted to run larger sheets of paper through my Xyron 900 and could not-bummer. I love the fact that the Creatopia embosses and does border cutting. Definitely a nice addition and upgrade to the Xyron 900. I found that the replacement cartridges for the 900 and the Creatopia are the same so I will most likely retire my 900 for a while and maybe pass it down to my daughters for school projects since I do love that machine and it's simple design and useability make it a keeper.

Okay some are probably wondering how this compares to the Cricut Expression. Should you buy this over the Cricut? Is this better? Worse? Well, it's not that cut and dry. The reasons I love the Xyron in general are for features that the Cricut does not necessarily have. I love the sticker making function. I LOVE being able to put adhesive on almost anything. I love being able to make magnets out of almost anything. I have made school pride magnets for the car, magnets of my children's work to hang on the fridge, I have laminated, etc...Now the Cricut, that's like a Mercedes or whatever nice car of choice you want to envision. The Cricut Expression is a wonderful machine, cuts like a dream. You can make things that you NEVER could make cutting freehand. I love that machine too. I just can't say I would choose one or the other. That may be because I do so many different things in terms of crafting that it makes both useful and almost necessary in my life. If you are a novice or occasional crafter or even a little skittish around technical devices, then the Cricut Expression may intimidate you and the Creatopia may be more your speed.

The Xyron Creatopia is pretty straight forward...Oh but wait, I have to agree with those who commented on the lack of directions. I thought the same thing! Common' Xyron!!! The only thing that saved me was that I owned the 900 and the machines work essentially the same way. I did struggle with the folding handle a bit and the locking mechanism because those things are not on my 900. It would have been nice to have clearer directions. You listening Xyron?!?!?

I really like this machine. I think it's great for many levels of craftiness. No electricity necessary. It is not very compact, but you need the size in order to accommodate the larger papers. the replacement cartridges are not terribly expensive (much less than the Cricut cartriges)and the adhesive tape does last a pretty long time depending on what you are doing. You'll get your money's worth with this one.