I'm a big fan of tediously cutting patterns out of paper by hand with an exact-o knife. My business cards are tiny hand-cut envelopes that hold stickers. I cut all my note cards with an exact-o knife as well- I've never even owned a paper cutter. But I have come across a great little machine called the Silhouette SD- a digital cutting tool that is so precise, and so easy to use.
Although it won't replace my exact-o knife, I find playing around with it pretty fun. What it does is connect to your computer like a printer, but instead of ink cartridges, it has a little blade that cuts text, or silhouetted images or patterns, cleanly out of your sheet of paper. It
even cuts into cardstock. The great thing about the Silhouette machine is that it's a lot like a
die cutter, but it doesn't require the physical die- which are expensive and hard to store. Because it's digital, you have an endless supply of shapes to cut- whatever you can imagine up. The machine works with it's own computer program which grants you the ability to
use drawing tools (although not on par with Adobe programs) to make shapes. Even better, you can drag in your own images and vectorize them right in the program.
I've been having a lot of fun having the chance to play with the positive/negative space in cut paper. Here are some of the first things I cut out and photographed:
I found the machine at the PaperSource but most of the components, like replacement blades and cutting mats, are available online at the Silhouette web site. They even sell vinyl with adhesive backing! I recommend checking this tool out if you're crafty with paper and want to try out something new.
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