CARL Heavy-Duty Paper Trimmer, 18″ (inch) with Scoring Blade

Take a look at our fancy new cutter. Ooh. Ahh!

It’s the CARL Heavy-Duty Paper Trimmer, 18″ (inch). It’s massive! I’ve been slicing paper and cardstock with a cheapo guillotine cutter since 2007. Making the switch to a fancy-schmancy rotary has been a bit of an adjustment, but I think it’s well-worth the investment. Each cut is clean and precise. It’s much easier to get an accurate measurement, even on a stack of paper. The product info says it can cut up to 36 pages at a time, although I’ve had to make more than one swipe on stacks of that size.

What excites me most about this cutter is the scoring blade. If you’re not familiar with scoring, here’s the why and how: Heavy-weight paper (like cardstock) can’t be folded by hand. It becomes wrinkly, cracked, and sometimes flaky. Running the scoring blade across the cardstock makes a crease in the paper without cutting it. This allows you to get a nice clean fold for your card. We’ve been shying away from making tattoo topper tags over the past year, because scoring with an non-heavy duty tool takes so much time and physical labor. Now, all we have to do is swap out the cutting blade on the CARL, replace it with the scoring blade, and the whole process becomes so much more efficient. Just wait until you see what we have planned for the tattoo topper tags now!

If you’re interested in picking up the CARL Heavy-Duty Paper Trimmer, 18″ (inch), I ordered this one through Office Depot/Office Max. I know a lot of crafters out there struggle to find a good, solid cutter. As long as you don’t need to make small cuts (less than 2”), I think this is a good choice.