QuicKutz Review

After getting a chance to try out the QuicKutz personal die cut system, I can see why there is so much excitement over it. I tend to cut out ALL of my titles individually for my layouts. It takes forever, but I love the look of intricate letters on my pages. Using the QuicKutz makes it 100 times faster to get the same great look.

My first reaction when I opened it up was “It’s SO small!” I was able to carry the tool and the binder of dies with me without having to reserve a ton of room for it in my Crop-in-Style XXL of scrap supplies. It just slid right in and I was on my way. This is definitely a great feature of the QuicKutz. If you go to a lot of crops, carrying it with you, along with however many alphabets and dies you have, is a breeze.

When I received the QuicKutz tool to review I put it through the ringer. I punched and punched and punched letters until my hands hurt and then I punched some more. I wanted to see how well it worked under fairly heavy usage. I guarantee you that I was worn out WAY before QuicKutz even flinched.

When a new set comes to you there is some set-up time that you’ll need to take into consideration. It doesn’t take long, and can be done as you use each letter instead of all at once. The die sets come with foam ejection squares that you need to place on each die. This only takes a few minutes to do all of the dies, and is essentially sticking a square of foam on each die. It’s easy, and quick.

I used the desktop cradle while I was punching my letters. I found it was easier to use my weight to press down on the handle than to try and use both hands to squeeze the ends. And by using the cradle, it was much more stable and I was able to move the paper around much easier to cut where I wanted to. I found that the letters cut more evenly also when I used my weight to squeeze the ends of the tool together completely.

Some of the letters didn’t cut quite as well as others. In the instruction pamphlet that came with the tool, QuicKutz suggested using the “shims” that are provided (very thin square stickers) on the back of the die to give just a little more pressure to the die when you press it. I did that for a few of the letters and it solved the problem. The thickness or thinness of the paper has an effect over whether the shim is necessary. I only needed it on a few letters, some of the more intricate ones, E’s, F’s, M’s etc.

Using the tool was definitely easy and fairly self-explanatory. It doesn’t take up a lot of room, and I was very pleased with the results of the cut letters. I liked the look of the fonts and the crisp edges of each cut.

Making pages at crops will be faster than ever if you use the QuicKutz. Titles always take me the longest to make, but with QuicKutz, it’s a matter of about a minute to have your whole title cut out and matted…an amazingly short amount of time, when I’ve been known to spend 20-30 minutes cutting out individual letters for my titles…and THEN going back and matting them!

I also really like the variety of fonts that they have. I’m a picky scrapbooker. I like to have just the right font for the right page, and I like it to look complicated. The styles of the first set of QuicKutz alphabets are almost all appealing to me. Many of them come with lowercase alphabets as well as uppercase, number sets, punctuation, and a set of shadow dies to allow easy matting. Knowing that there are more fonts being released every quarter and new shapes every month makes it even more exciting! (Sometimes the releases will be different versions of a current style, and sometimes it will be a new style all together.) The hardest part is choosing which ones to get, since they all look great!

The biggest barrier in this product is the price. It’s definitely an investment. If you’re fairly content with buying $10 templates and tracing and cutting your letters, then QuicKutz probably won’t be appealing to your pocketbook. However, if you really dislike cutting out individual letters using trace and cut templates, or you make lots of swap titles with hand cut letters, or you’re on a time crunch for great scrapbook pages and want the intricate look of fancy fonts and detailed die cuts, it’s not bad. Especially if you measure the pros and cons of other die cut and punch systems that aren’t as portable, yet are nearly as pricey. QuicKutz has a $199.99 Star Mini's kit that allows you to get into the system for a better price than you can get for a set of alphabet punches.

Sharing fonts and dies is probably the most economical way to go with this product. Get a few of your scrapbooking friends together and each buy a different font. Then you’ll have more of the variety, without having to buy each font.

All in all, I was pleased with the QuicKutz. It performs just as it’s promised to and is fun to use.

Visit the QuicKutz web page.

See layouts using QuicKutz dies in the SJ gallery.

View other user reviews on the QuicKutz in the SJ message boards.