Simple Holiday Cards Cricut Cartridge Tutorial

The Simple Holiday Cards Cricut Cartridge was one of my Black Friday purchases from JoAnn's this year.  Since it comes with no instructions, even online (thanks Cricut!!), I thought I'd share.  It took me about half a day to figure out, but now I think I have it! 

Here are my two biggest questions answered:

1.  What size paper do I use?  It made sense to me to use a sheet of paper cut in half like I would use if I were making a card (8.5"x5.5"), but it didn't say anywhere so I had to guess.  The cartridge is set-up to take a full sheet of paper, cut out the design, then cut out the card.  However, I found that if you position the 8.5"x5.5"paper correctly on the mat, it will cut out the design and you can stop the machine before it starts to cut out the perimeter of the card.

So this leads me to my next question......

2. How do you load the paper for making vertical and horizontal cards?  I had to play around with this a bit to find the exact position, which I then marked on my Cricut mat using a permanent marker. I'm not sure if each Cricut is the same, but this is how I positioned the paper on my mat. Once I had this, all horizontal cards were the same, and all vertical cards were the same.

Positioning for Vertical Cards:

-Lay paper vertical

-From starting position, move paper 3/16" to the left

-Move paper down 7/16"

Positioning for Horizontal Cards:

-Lay paper horizontal

-From starting position, move paper 1/4" to the left

-Move paper down 7/16" 

Once I got it figured out I love the cards it makes, and I think the cartridge has easily paid for itself! I did not have any trouble with it cutting out the small detail, but I did run my Cricut on a low speed.  Here are some of the cards I made using the Simple Holiday Cards Cricut Cartridge: