And now for something completely different...

... a product review. I consider myself to be a "general" crafter, meaning that I like to dabble in many things other than just making jewelry. I also enjoy a bit of scrap booking on occasion as well. After using these templates a bit and looking for a good review on them and not finding any, I thought I might ought to do a bit of a review myself.

Just a few days ago I purchased the X-Acto Basic Shape Templates in order to help me with crafting some holiday items. I got them for just under $8 at Walmart in their ever-dwindling craft department's scrap book section. As I already have the Designer Series Swivel Blade I thought these would come in handy to easily cut out nice, neat and precise shapes using the templates. Sad to say this is not so.

I have been playing around with them for the last hour or so and I'm just not impressed with them. The gap in which you place the blade to do the cutting is just a tad too wide and allows the blade to swagger side to side and thus giving a much less than smooth cut. The walls of the "blade channel" (for lack of a better term) are also a bit flexible which also gives a less than stable cut. Also note that the thickness is just thick enough that the blade just barely touches the paper.

All in all I give them a thumbs down. I do plan to experiment with them a bit more later so if my opinion of them changes or I get the hang of them better I'll update, but I don't expect that to happen. I think I'd rather just have my $8 back.