Now that may seem a strange title but let me explain. In August I received a delivery from Fellowes of some small office equipment to review. My neighbour's house sitter took in the parcels and then when I popped round to collect helped me bring them home as the largest of the boxes was, he said heavy. He wasn't wrong and later that evening I unboxed a binder (the heavy box), laminator and trimmer along with accessories to get started with the laminator and binder machine.
It's fair to say I was pretty overwhelmed. Not only by the kit in front of me and where I would store them, but also how I could use them. I wanted to do something more creative than organise MOH's shed, labelling where he should put things (although I will do that at some point) but what exactly, I wasn't sure. The Ideas Centre on the Fellowes site helped with the inspiration, and after a little percolation I started to have some ideas.
First though I needed to address where to store them, as MOH kept saying he was getting fed up of walking past them. I knew I had to have a bit of sort out in our study-cum-craft-room which had become our dumping ground. On the face of it the sort out looked like I'd just moved stuff into the top bedroom (and I have) but I've also rationalised what's in the study. And the things I've moved out are in a "to be sorted" pile.
CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: BINDER, LAMINATOR AND TRIMMER
Out of their boxes the items looked equally impressive; the laminator and trimmer are A3 size, which I know will be handy as often scrapbook papers are larger than the smaller A4 size. The binder - which is the heaviest item looks sleek and I think will fit inside one of the Ikea Corras units we have in the study.
I was intrigued to see inside this machine, as while I've seen many bound documents, I've not actually done any myself. It had the look of a typewriter (without the keys) if you looked quickly. If you're not sure what I mean, you're probably too young to know, so please just humour me.
A hive of activity
With space in the study almost sorted, and renewed vigour to finally tackle the collage wall that I've been collecting frames and pictures for, this weekend we set about making it happen. It seems my frames to pictures ratio is slightly out and we have many more frames than pictures. My thinking is that if we're going to go for the informal collage approach, then all the frames need to be on the wall at the same time, especially as I've pictures ranging from A2 size to A6 (postcard) size.
I wasn't keen to have empty frames on the wall, so while I find the long-term pictures I decided to fill the frames with scrapbook paper, and so, in came the trimmer.
After marking where I should cut in pencil I lined it up on the cutting line of the trimmer, which has a LED guide to help you cut just where you expected to.
The trimmer was easy to use and easy too to trim small amounts from the edge. As well as the LED guide, the other really handy part of the trimmer was the gripper (the smoky plastic "flaps" to the left of the cutting line in the picture below) which worked well keeping the paper in place.
With my paper cut to size it was easy to add to the frame. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, and with how the trimmer performed. The trimmer itself is lightweight and there's some additional cutting blades that I still need to try out. What I like about those is their integral storage - those three orange buttons in the picture below are those blades. They're easily inserted into the cutting head too, I'll let you know how I get on with those.
And isn't it always the case, that once you get started it's hard to stop?
That was me on Sunday too.
Like many crafters - tell me I'm not alone - I have a collection of paint charts and paint strips, and an idea was starting to form for my next project, and it would make use of the laminator and the binder too.
With my paint chart cut ready, I was ready for the laminator. But what's my project? Can you guess?
I'll share more soon, I promise!
* This is a collaborative post, I was sent the small office equipment in this post by Fellowes for use in my creative projects in return for sharing my views and opinions.
