I drew some succulent patterns in Illustrator and exported them as SVG. The Cricut Design Space, the app the cutter uses, is fairly straight forward and easy to navigate. First cuts! The sticky cutting mat smells like a toxic headache, though.

Here’s the first batch. The software arranges the cuts for best use of the material.

By far the most difficult and tedious task is removing my many, many small shapes from the cutting mat.

A proposed stack. As it turns out, the two 11-leaved pieces don’t work well at all for miniature succulents.

Here’s a first model and prototype. I’ll need to make some several before I work out the best construction techniques.

After revising the patterns, I cut a 12 x 12-inch sheet of colored stock. That’s a lot of prying off to do. Best tool I’ve used thus far is a thin, flexible wedge-shaped palette knife. The next thing I want to determine is if the pen can have a broader tip, and can outline the cut line, and hold registration with the cutter. Learning!