The Things You Didn't Know You Needed: Part 4

OK, so first things first - I am not a Cricut girl. I am totally, completely and 100% {devoted} to my Silhouette. But... I recently found myself in need of a device that could make perfectly straight & measured cuts to things like photographs ~ and as much as I love my Silhouette, I'm not good enough with it yet to pop a photo into it and ask it to trim off a 1/4" on each side. The Cricut Trimmer turned out to be {exactly} what I needed.




If you're a paper scrapper or a paper crafter, this is obviously something that you would get a lot of use out of. If you're a photographer, digital artist, or digital scrapper ~ and {especially} if you commonly design or print things in "off" sizes like 5x5 or 8x8 ~ you will find plenty of uses for it as well. I found that I needed it when I ordered a pair of 8x8 prints from Costco with a photo floating in the center of a white background. I found out that day that just because the lab offers an 8x8 print doesn't mean that they can actually measure & cut the correct size ~ they rely on the edge of the photograph to know where to cut. Highly annoying, yes ~ but a problem? Not anymore!

This little do-hickey is very affordable (I paid around $10 for mine at Meijer) and it cuts very well. The reviews I've seen give it credit for cutting paper and cardstock, but last night I decided to test it on some matboard and it {rocked}. I had to do a pass on the top, then flip the matboard over and run a pass on the bottom-side of the cut to get all the way through, but it worked perfectly, and folding the matboard after the first cut left a crease on the back that was easy to follow when I went to do the second cut. What this means for me (and probably for some of you, too) is that I can now mount my own photos & digital art pieces on matboard without having to hurt my hands by asking too much of my scissors, or bust out a box cutter. And ~ added bonus ~ this cutter has none of the terrifyingly guillotine-like qualities of those super heavy old-school chop cutters popular in classrooms across America, so I'm not worried about my kids messing with it and amputating a limb. ;)

And now, I'm off to bust out the spray adhesive & mount the above-mentioned photos to the newly cut matboard! Yippeeeee!!!