Posted on Leave a comment

Papercutting project (continued): leafy corner sprig

papercut leafy corner sprig 686 square watermarked - LaserSister - KayVincent

Leafy corner sprig #686

This ‘leafy corner sprig’ papercut is part of my ongoing papercutting project, where I’m adapting lots of designs for papercutting from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, and am then cutting them with a scalpel. This one is design #686 from the book.

(Some of the links in this article might be ‘affiliate links’. If you’d like to know more, please check out the small print page…)

Closer up:

Are they leaves, or are they flowers? I’m not sure. But I like the overall effect of the swirly vine-y pattern. I think it would look really nice as a repeated decoration in the four corners of a larger design:

Now that I’m a couple of years into this project, I can definitely see that my cutting skills have improved. The cuts seem to look a lot cleaner and more accurate than they used to.

However, I must admit that the reason is due to a bit of a cheat, really. I cut each piece out … but then leave it aside for a few days or weeks. Then when I come back to it again I ‘edit’ it by snipping at it a bit more and smoothing and neatening lines. Each piece usually only needs a few tweaks, but those little tweaks really do make a big difference, overall.

Before, I used to just keep cutting until I either ran out of leisure time, or my eyes got tired, or I got frustrated with all of the mistakes that I was making. But now I’ve realised that if I’m making mistakes and ripping the designs then it’s either because I’m tired, or because the scalpel blade is getting dull. Both of those causes are easy to fix – I either need to stop and have a rest, or to change the blade.

I can’t remember exactly where I bought my replacement scalpel blades the last time, but it must have been either Ebay or Amazon. I bought a pack of 100 and I’m still using them, over two years later. These are the sort of blades that I searched for when I was looking at buying the replacements.

Any comments about the design or the cutting? You can chip in via the comments page, or Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.

Posted on Leave a comment

100+ Replacement scalpel blades for papercutting

Where can I buy replacement scalpel (x-acto) blades in the UK?

(Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you’d like to know more, please check out the small print page…)

My ongoing papercutting project continues, where I’m trying to adapt all 922 images from the book “922 Decorative Vector Ornaments“, to make them into papercutting designs, and then cut them out by hand. (Oh alright – for accuracy’s sake, I’m cutting them out with a scalpel, not my hand.) But in order to do that I need a constant supply of fresh, sharp scalpel blades. And if I’m going to cut 922 designs, then I will need 100+ replacement scalpel blades.

I haven’t found anywhere to buy them locally, so I need to buy them online. And it looks like the only way to buy blades economically is to order them in bulk. So I normally do a search on Amazon or Ebay.

But Amazon and Ebay sellers come and go all the time, and so do their products. Therefore I’ll try to keep updating this page whenever I find a supplier of 100+ replacement X-Acto / scalpel blades.

In the meantime, here are the latest links I’ve found:

As I mentioned above, suppliers keep changing, and so I don’t think these are the exact same replacement blades that I am currently using. But when I do run out of my current supply, this is the kind of search that I will be running, and these are the kind of blades that I will be buying.

Are you a supplier of replacement blades, or do you know of a good source? If so, please give me a shout! You can let me know via the comments section or Contact page, or Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.