Question About Paper Cutting

I recently saw this comment on my blog:

Anonymous said...
Your blog has been so helpful to me. Because of this blog and your helpful examples I have finally decided to take the plunge and buy a press of my very own. I was wondering do you cut your paper or do you have it cut for you? If you do your own, what do you use to cut it? Thanks!
Monday, July 16, 2007

First off, thank you for the feedback, and I'm glad that you find my blog so helpful! I do hope you find a class or a workshop near you so you get some instruction on letterpress before plunging in!

On to paper cutting. So this is not quite as simple of an answer as you would think. I try to take the lazy approach and buy pre-cut paper and cardstock, like the Fabriano, Arturo, and Paper Source cards. But every now and then, it's necessary to get the paper cut down to size. When it's a professional job that I want to have exact cuts on, I take it to a professional place. Kelly Paper charges a flat charge of $15 to cut parent sheets down to whatever size(s) you want. But that means you have to buy the paper from Kelly Paper. Kinko's charges $1.49 or something per cut per 100 sheets, and so far, they've been the best and cheapest to work with. But every Kinko's is different, so tread carefully. Do a test cut order first. It'll be worth the $5 to make sure that they can actually cut and follow directions. I had half of a ream of 220lb cardstock ruined by Office Max's Impress, and I guarantee I will NEVER be going back there to cut paper.

For smaller cutting jobs or jobs where I don't need exact precision, I use my 12" x 12" paper trimmer, which is a guillotine style trimmer. For the larger sheets, I go to Kinko's, where they have a large rotary trimmer set out for customers to use, or to my local art center/school, where they generally have larger paper trimmers set out for students to use.

I hope this helps!