My order is on its way! And paper cutters

I'm so excited! I placed my order after supper last night and received notification this afternoon that it is now on its way. I love how quickly it was taken care of! It means I should have everything before next weekend. I'm supposed to have a mini Christmas card-making stamp-a-stack with a friend next weekend, so I hope it shows up in time for me to prepare all the materials! There is a bunch of card stock to cut.

Speaking of cutting, this could be a good time to talk about paper cutters/trimmers. When I was working on a scrapbook project, I decided to get myself one. I went to Michaels and bought a Cricut paper trimmer. I was in heaven! I had used it to make my own cards before getting much in terms of Stampin' Up stuff.

Then I had to prepare for a workshop. And the Cricut was shredding the edge, not leaving it nice and smooth like my demonstrator/upline's cards were. I knew she took card stock in sometimes to have professionally cut (I think it's laser cut!), but some were done by hand and definitely did not look like what my Cricut was doing.

I figured it was because of a dull blade. I was desperate, we were in the middle of a snow storm, so I went to Staples (very close to me) and ended up buying a Fiskars. After I got it home, I discovered it didn't have the fold-out arm, which is a shame because that measuring arm is so useful when cutting for card-making. In any case, it worked well and I was happy. I decided to buy some replacement blades for my Cricut anyhow, thinking it couldn't hurt to have 2 paper trimmers, especially one with the fold-out arm.

I then discovered something.

The new blades were cutting card stock the way the old blade was.

The blade wasn't dull. The Cricut just can't compare to the Fiskars.

I wondered what the Stampin' Up cutters were like, but didn't spend too much time thinking about it--now that I had 2 paper cutters and replacement blades for them both. When trying to figure out my final items for my order yesterday, I was looking at the options for paper cutters. You can see them on page 208. As I looked at the first one, the one that's $35.95, I noticed the cutter blade. It looked oddly familiar. It hit me that it was a Fiskars blade! I looked it up in the online store and zoomed in on the picture:

 

It says Fiskars on the top. :)

Hey, why don't I show you a comparison shot? I'm not sure how well this will come out, but here goes.

Can you see the difference between the two edges? The right side was cut with my Cricut cutter; the left with the Fiskars. What you can't see is that the Cricut also kind of bends the paper more where the cut is compared to the Fiskars.

Now, if you want to have a serious paper cutter, this is probably the one to go for at home:

Stampin' Up's Tabletop Paper Cutter 106959

In the description, it says it won't fray card stock. The Fiskars one doesn't say that. My Fiskars does fray the card stock lightly, but not even close to as noticeable as with the Cricut. This is one of those ones that you raise the handle, then slice down. They're amazing. I think once I go through all of my replacement blades, this is the one I will get. I will still use my Cricut, but for little things, making strips for things to use in punches, etc., NOT for cutting the card stock into the cards themselves. It's pricier, but when you go through a couple of replacement blades a year (at least, if you are cutting a lot), those replacement blades add up!