My craft supplies

Craft supplies are your closest friends when it comes to crafting. They help you to make beautiful things, make creative thoughts come true.

I always enjoy getting to know what craft supplies other crafters use. To see what supplies help them to create their crafts. Therefore I offer you a look “behind the scenes”. Maybe you’ll find something new and useful to you. If you have any craft supplies suggestions.. let me know! 🙂

Overview of craft supplies

Below you can find an overview of the main craft supplies that I use for cardmaking. Each craft supply has been given a number. The description (by number) can be found under the picture.

1. Self-healing cutting mat
A cutting mat is an absolute musthave if you want to use a craft knife. It can also serve as a placemat (to protect your table and to keep it clean). I just bought this mat at a craft store in Rotterdam. It really does the job well. The mat has two sides: a green and black one, both sides contain clear grid lines.

2. Silhouette scissors (curved)
Believe it or not, I started crafting with hair scissors. Yes, for real! After a short period of time I bought a craft scissors from a cheap store. The scissors had a nice soft grip feature, but the cutting result wasn’t very precisely. Then I bought two silhouette scissors (curved & straight) from a descend local craft store. Both scissors provide nice results, though I do miss the soft grip feature a bit.

3. Eraser
An eraser is useful to adjust sketches or to remove text / cut lines. I like to use an eraser which is solid, yet flexible. The one I currently use is from the brand Staedtler.

4. Distress ink
In the past I used to have an office ink pad. The ink pad was integrated in the box (really flat), making it hard to ink my stamps. Therefore when it dried out, I decided to buy a new ink pad. In many webshops and craft stores I’ve seen the brand Distress. The reviews were great, so I decided to buy the “black soot” one. The ink pad is quite large, so you can easily ink several stamps at the same time. Maybe I’ll buy some more ink colors in the future. For now black will do ?

5. Lawn Fawn stamps
I’ve got two alphabetical clear stamp sets from this brand: Jessie & Smitty. I really love the fonts, they are decent and casual at the same time. What I like the most about this product is that multiple copies of the same letter are available. This allows you to stamp entire words such as “Happy Birthday” at once. Cheers to the product creator for thinking along with the stampers! ?

6. Uni Pin fine-liner
I use a fine-liner for two purposes: to write texts on my cards and to sketch in my sketch book.The ink color is just plain black. I prefer using a fine-liner over a fountain pen, because the ink dries faster.

7. Craft knife
This supply is very similar to scissors. The main benefit of a craft knife is that it allows you to cut very precise (Google papercut). The craft knife in this collage is my favorite craft knife at the moment (brand OLFA). I value other people’s opinion a lot, so I first read some reviews and watched videos on Youtube. I really like this craft knife and use it daily. The craft knife has a softgrip handle which makes it easy and comfortable to cut.

8. Double-sided adhesive tape
My sticky friend! Another creative person made me realize that double-sided tape might be more effective than glue. The material always sticks well and you have no adhesive residue. Please use the craft version of double-sided adhesive tape instead of the one at the DIY store. The tape is smaller, less rigid and therefore easier to cut to the right size.

9. Scissors
Everyone needs a good pair of basic craft scissors. They come in handy for the general paper cut tasks. If you need a more detailed cut, you can either use a craft knife (number 7) or silhouette scissors (number 2).

10. Pencil
This is a basic craft supply which you simply can’t ignore ? I use it to sketch and to draw text / cut lines.

11. Stamp press
This craft supply is a real good invention! You can stick multiple stamps to the big stamp press and ink them. Therefore it’s easy to stamp a whole text like “Happy Birthday” at once on your card(s). The grid lines help you to place the stamps in the way you want: straight, curved, diagonal etc. Thanks to the orange spongy “legs”, you’re able to measure precisely where to stamp. Once you’re satisfied, you simple press the stamp press down and voilà! Watch this video if you want to see a demo.

12. Graphic craft ruler
This supply is an aaabsolute musthave if you want to cut straight lines with a craft knife. A usual ruler is not solid enough to use, because you easily cut into it. You need a ruler which is partly made of steel. It doesn’t need to be 100% steel, because those rulers usually don’t have non-skid areas (my experience). A craft store employer advised me to buy an acrylic ruler with non-skid areas plus a inset steel cutting edge. This is one of my best craft purchases ever!