Just thought I would share my experience with what I purchased and the success that I am having with the items.



I pined over which printer to buy for the longest time. I finally bit the bullet on this little gem. It is incredibly accurate and handles 110lb. cardstock like it was made to. The colors are crisp and accurate with minimal modification to the properties (+10 brightness is all). Oh, it prints pretty darn fast, too.


This thing is outstanding for cutting foam core. Minimal tearing and typically handles it in two passes, even when trying to follow the three pass method. After trying three other knives, this has ended up as my workhorse.

Blade refills can be purchased in 100 packs for about $10.


This knife has been good for cutting the cardstock, but really shines when scoring. Cutting requires firmess, but scoring takes no effort whatsoever.

One thing that I cannot recommend enough... Get yourself a good quality cutting mat, typically the self-healing kind. I was able to find an 9x12 one for $10 at the local craft store and it has proven to be invaluable.

Outside of these items, I obviously purchased the other standard recommended items, but the above were some of the things I had questions about when going in so I thought I would share my experience.

In closing, to any fellow rookies, precision in the foam core is preferred, but if you can't provide perfect precision, do not worry. The system is very forgiving and can be made up in accuracy of your tiles (card stock accuracy) themselves. In other words, you can still practice getting better at the foam core cutting and you likely will not have to throw them out if you feel that you have messed something up.

I'll second the Stanley Utility Knife. The blades aren't too pricey, and you get double use out of each one (effectively costing 50 cents per cutting surface). If you want to cut down on the cost a bit, it can do double duty on cutting out the cardstock, since the tip of the blade is fine enough to give you a good amount of control. It also cuts through pretty much everything with great ease, not even slowing down for sandwiched cardstock or foamcore.
Magius out.

The Stanley knife is a bit too bulky for me. I've been very happy with for foamcore - I expose 3 or 4 blade sections and make a couple of very low-angle passes to get thru the board. The low angle/long cutting surface prevents 'chunks' from coming out of the foam.

I use for everything else & I love it.

I can't seem to find a 100-pack of refill blades for the Stanley 10-788. Is there a way to know which kind of blade this knife takes?