I do this because...

After a very long wait my new knife blades arrived today. Unfortunately my eldest son got to them before me and had managed to unwrap the big box and open the next level of box to get to the individual packs of blades before being discovered! Fortunately he hadn't managed to open the blister pack so apart from our hearts stopping with fright for a moment everyone is unscathed.

Why so excited about knife blades? Well it seems ridiculously hard to get bulk quantities of the blade for the Xacto swivel knife and has taken serious amounts of web searching to find a supplier.

So this afternoon whilst the boys were safely out the way I decided to replace my decidely blunt knife blade for a new one. I have never changed a swivel knife blade before and couldn't believe the saga it was. Two pairs of pliers, a lot of colourful language and 30mins later I finally managed to replace the blade. My knife is now very, very scratched by the pliers but hopefully it won't be so difficult to unscrew next time I want to change the blade.

As I contemplated the palava it took to change one blade and the fact that I have just bought 150 I must confess to having a moment of "is it really worth it?" It didn't last long as my new blade was soon gliding round curves and helping me cut out crisp detailed bugs (yep still cutting them!).

What really makes it worth it though is that with the help of knives us papercutters can create truly beautiful things which make us and other people smile. Like this clever lady CecilyMaeHandmade who made this:

I couldn't stop smiling when I saw this or the other lovely things in her shop. Happiness is a well executed papercut!