Paper Craft Tools

Written and Created by PaperCraftCentral Susan

There are so many paper craft tools available today. It can be confusing when you first start out with your new hobby. Of course, more experienced papercrafters like to know about all the new tools that are coming out.

The same tools can usually be used for card making, scrapbooking and other paper projects. I believe they are certainly worth the initial cost as the proper tool can make all the difference in your papercrafting results.

"To crop or not to crop,
that is the question. ~Author Unknown"

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Paper Craft Tools in My Collection

These pages are by no means a complete list but they do tell you about the tools I know and love. These items can often help to make your projects look much more complete, accurate and professional and even make your crafting more satisfying and fun.

I will add to this list as I try out new tools and find ways that help to show you examples of scrapbooking, cardmaking and paper craft tools and/or how they work.

Many of these items featured can be purchased from my Stampin' Up! store (click on the catalogue picture to the right), but I have also tried other brands of useful items out so you may not find everything I mention here in the catalogue.

New Craft Tools

I love new paper craft tools.

The Stamparatus from Stampin' Up!was an excellent stamp positioner tool. It retired though so you will need to hunt for one or choose another stamp positioning tool instead. There are lots of hints for how to use any stamp positioner if you go to the Stamparatus page (highlighted at the start of this paragraph)

My Stamparatus sure made getting these cute pandas pretty perfect! I wanted them to be super saturated and black, so I positioned them with the doors of the tool, then used a mask to make sure the two of them held hands right, and reinked and re-stamped to my heart's content.

This is a wedding card so it had to be right!

By the way, this is also an Eclipse card.

All I did was stamp my images, then arrange the word 'love' on top with my Large Letter Alphabet dies, and send the whole thing through the Die Cut and Embossing Machine. I took the letters and their little paper chads out, then popped up the main letters with Stampin' Dimensionals. They fit right back into their negative shapes.

The Rich Razzelberry (a retired colour) mat underneath the letters subtly provided a bit of depth for my letters too as it just barely peeks through under the letters.

But I digress.

Here's more information about the tools I have in my stash

List of Tools So Far

Here are some of the paper craft tools I currently use:

• Acrylic Stamps or unmounted stamps, are easy to assemble once you know how. Find out how to assemble them.
• Gift Bag making boards are great for making customised gift bags and whole no longer stocked by Stampin' Up! are available from craft stores. See how it works.

• Die Cut and Embossing Machines  are great machines for die cutting and embossing. Imagine cutting out shape after shape, all the same size, with a turn of a handle!
• Or imagine Dry Embossing as many cardstock elements you want, at the turn of a handle! I show you some ways to extend the use of your embossing folders.
  
• Here are some more embossing folder techniques.

Bone Folders are great paper craft tools for sharply creasing and scoring your paper projects. I count a bone folder as one of my essential paper craft tools.

Bag making boards are wonderful for making custom sized boxes and more. You can also make your own boxes without using a board, but a board makes making large number of boxes or bags consistently much easier.

Brayers with a wide rubber barrel provide a way for you to lay down lots of colour and create some other interesting effects with paint and ink.

You can now get Stampin' Brayers from Stampin' Up!. They are only 4.4cms wide so are great for ink techniques in cardmaking, tags and other small project work.

Crafter's Toolkits usually contain any combination of such things as hole punches, eyelet setters, needles, paper piercing tools, bottle-nosed pliers, wire cutters, tweezers and a hammer.

Your choice of toolkit depends on what you would like to make the most, but this combination of tools usually winds up being part of a serious papercrafter's tool kit over time.

Clear Acrylic Stamps Blocks. Click to see how to use them

The Crop-a-dile provides great ways to punch holes in paper, tin, chipboard and other heavy-weight materials such as leather and quilting material with absolute ease. Surprised? It can do more.

Cutting Systems can be purchased to provide you with templates for cutting common shapes such as circles and ovals when you do not have a die cutting machine like a Big Shot. It is so useful to have uniform and nested shapes. Good cutting systems allow you to make several sizes of the same shape by the addition of several grooves that allow the blade to cut smaller or larger shapes. They are wonderful paper craft tools that will help you with ideas for many types of projects.

A Die Brush will help you quickly and easily remove cardstock from an intricate Big Shot die. It also helps you clean the die of chads afterwards.

Distressing Tools can add a lot of texture and interest to your paper craft projects.

An Embossing Buddy is a small pillow of fine powder that can help prevent extra glitter or embossing powder from sticking to your project. Just rub it across your cardstock before applying the ink, glue and powders/glitter.

Envelope Punch Boards are wonderful tools for helping you make your own customised envelopes but you can also make your own envelopes if you don't have a punch board yet. If you do have a punch board, here's how to use it.

Heat Guns or Heat Tools are used for a number of surprising purposes but never for drying your pet dog! The tool is much too hot for living things!

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Hot Glue Guns are one of those paper craft tools that are great for gluing sturdy projects and have many more uses, such as making your own dots and painting them like pearls with shimmer paint, decorating brads with glue beads and more.

Did you know there may be a simple way to reduce the stringy tails some glue guns produce in some climates?

Paper Crimpers are tools that easily create handmade embellishments for your papercraft projects. Add dimension and interest with the twist of your wrist!

A Paper Flower Shaping Tool can help you shape paper flowers and form them into 3-d works of art.

It has a rounded tip for forming rounded shapes and a semi-circular tip for making sharper folds and shapes

 

Paper Piercing Mats and Tools are terrific for making even patterns on cards and scrapbook pages. You can make rows of little holes to add dimension to a project. You can use pens to draw between the holes to make faux stitching. You can use this paper craft tool to add texture and depth to particular parts of an image.

They provide even pressure and ink coverage for stamped projects. This mat is ideal for stamping with photopolymer.

Paper Trimmers are essential items for crafters for accuracy, convenience and ease of cutting.

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Now For More Paper Craft Tools:

Personal Trimmers or Guillotines are very useful for cutting photographs and other paper to size.

I find some of the smaller trimmers are best used for photos only as other types of paper tends to dull the blade.

Choose a larger and heavier guillotine for cutting scrapbook pages and cardstock, especially if you need to handle a large amount of paper cutting for workshops, home classes or other events. 

Punches are tools that allow you to punch out special shapes over and over again. They are useful scrapbook tools that you can use to make shapes for borders or frames for your projects, for making cards and a whole lot more.

Here's one way to use a jigsaw punch submitted by Vanessa.

You can see more projects on the Punch Art pages.

Sandpaper is useful for many little jobs, such as roughing up a paper surface to add interest to the project, fixing the edges of 3d paper projects where corners meet or edges need to be smoother.

Scissors or Paper Snips need to be sharp and sturdy for paper projects to look great.

You will need both larger and smaller sized scissors. The larger scissors are good for times when you want to cut across large areas or when your project needs you to have tools with a little more strength.

Smaller scissors with sharp, fine tips are essential for cutting intricate and delicate designs precisely.

Some people have a special pair of scissors for cutting ribbons, a set for cutting rubber, and another set entirely for cutting paper. This helps to keep your particular pair sharp and useful for their job. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: Do protect these essential paper craft tools from anyone in the house who isn't a papercrafter! I have had wonderful scissors ruined by family members who thought it wouldn't matter if they cut a piece of wire 'just once' (not mentioning any names! Lol!)

A Self-Healing Cutting Mat is the basis for every papercraft project I attempt. Such a mat will protect your furniture, your tools and even you from injury at times. It provides a safe place to use sharp tools, score papers and it provides lots of assistance with measuring and spacing if it has a grid marked out on it.

A Stamp-a-ma-jig or Stamp Positioner is of great help when you want to position a stamp exactly on the page.

are wonderful tools for cutting longer pieces of paper or card stock. These tools usually have very sharp blades that can be replaced as needed.

Good quality trimmers can complete large numbers of cuts before a replacement blade is necessary, so do choose a trimmer to suit your frequency of use.

Writing Guides help you to space your title lettering accurately or to curve your text uniformly when you want to.

There are various systems available for helping you to both form letters and align text. I have chosen a system that allows me to place letters on wavy or circular lines as well as to make straight lines of text.

Tool Maintenance Tips:

Here are some more ideas about maintaining your paper crafting tools:

• To learn about mounting, using and cleaning your stamps, click on Rubber Stamps for Cardmaking
• To learn more about sharpening your cutters and scissors, click on Keeping Your Tools Sharp
• To find out more about the right adhesives to use in your projects, click on Scrapbooking and Papercraft Adhesives

I hope you gained some information about the types of paper craft tools available and how to use them by reading these pages.

I'll be adding pictures and more pages as I keep discovering more goodies, so do check back often!

Product Reviews

• Radiant Rain Paint Daubers

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