I received a Fiskars Fuse Creativity System as a gift from my sister Lori for my birthday. She bought it for me because she knew I had been looking for a cutter that would cut leather...but it needed to be simple - i wasn't ready for a huge learning curve. Lori owns just about every cutter known to man, including the electronic ones. I sent her leather samples....and she tested away. This was the one that met my criteria!
The Fiskars cutter is a manual cutter. It weighs a TON! But it is super powerful! You can use brand dies other than Fiskars with it.
I wanted to use Tim Holtz Dies, so I went online and watched a you tube that told the right adapters to use. Lori had given me the adapters, too..... although you can also use the equivalent size acrylic plates and/or self healing mats, cut to size. There are a lot of you tubes that show this.
OK...,these are the dies i used.
I used them with the fiskar adaptor cutting plate, the b shim and the c shim. It said to use the b on top of the c, but the b is so thin that the die cut thru it. I didn't want the shim to be shredded after minimal uses, so after that i put it under the thicker c, and it still cut my leather fine.
I tried to use the Tim Holtz Alterations thin border dies, but they would not work on the leather. I built the adapters up into a configuration that was a thick as the above Tim Holtz dies, but the leather would not cut. Finally I realized the leather was thicker than the depth of these thin dies. Boo Hoo.
 |
| Nope....these dies won't cut thru leather...will cut paperstock |
I used 2-3oz leather (each ounce is approx. 1/64 "), suede and embossed leather that was approx. 4 oz (1/16th inch) and 6 oz leather (about 1/8th inch). The 6 oz leather did not cut all the way thru, but sort of partially cut/embossed the leather. That is the brown zig zag piece in the pics below. I had another piece of 6 oz brown leather that was very stiff. It would not cut/emboss this piece at all.
 |
| aren't they cool! |
The suede piece is the pinkie brown one on the left. The one on the far right is the 6oz piece that did not cut all the way thru. The rest are 2-5 oz leathers. The wings were the only ones that cut with a bit of raggedness - but not too much. You can see the bit of fraying on the right wing if you enlarge it..... I will probably use these doubled up to put on thicker veg tanned leathers for cuffs. Awesome, huh?
Now I need to get some more of the thicker Tim Holtz Sizzix dies that also emboss. For that I will use 4 oz veg tanned dies that have been softened with water so that hopefully they will take the embossing.
Stay tuned.
 |
| Rainbow on Kauai to welcome the New Year |
Posts
