Cutting mats

[kaymommy]

I just wanted to add my 2 cents on making your mats sticky again. I have used baby wipes - and that worked for a little while. When a mat is fairly new and just needs the lint cleaned off baby wipes work great. I really recommend this to get a longer life out of your mat. After a while, though, or with very heavy use, the baby wipes just don't work anymore.

I took an old mat and tried three different glues. First I tried an Elmers Spray Adhesive - it is supposed to be repositionable after it dries, but when it was dry it was totally dry, not sticky at all.

Next, I tried the Krylon Easy-Tack spray. It was a little sticky and might work good to freshen a lightly used mat and hold light-weight paper, but I thought that it was not even as sticky as some of my other old mats. I also seem to cut a lot of card-stock and I have better success cuttins on a stickier mat.

Finally, I tried the Zig glue pen. I couldn't find the jumbo, so I used the smaller Chisel Tip. It took a while to cover the mat - clearly would be easier to apply with a jumbo tip. The Zig pen was clearly the best (stickiest) solution. This is what I will use from now on - or until I find another option.

So, I wish that I had not needed to buy three products to learn all of this. The Elmers was about $5 at Walmart, the Krylon was $7 at Michaels and the Zig pen was $3 at Walmart. It ended up that the least expensive product actually worked the best. Thought I would share my findings and hopefully save someone else some money!

Kay B