Buy A Stylus - Now

The very first thing I think that any crafter who makes cards or mini albums or envelopes or almost any paper project should tell you - but don't - is buy an embossing stylus.

I don't know why they don't. It sure would have saved me a few headaches and curse words. I watched some classes and heard a few offhand "Don't use the scorer that comes with this board" on most of them, but they didn't tell me what I should be using instead. I saw this little stick doohickey in their hand, but I never got a good look at it and I didn't know what it was called. And I looked and looked and looked at the Michaels and Joanns and occasional dedicated scrapbooking stores that I went to (I don't have a local one), but never saw anything like it until about a week ago.

Martha's come in a set of three.

I found the Martha Stewart set of embossing styluses at a Michaels and grabbed them up like they were gold. And wow, what a difference! My paper doesn't tear or get ripped to shreds by the serrated edges like it does on one of the scoring tools I have (that came with one of the scoreboards I bought). Seriously, what kind of idiot puts serrated edges on something used for paper?

Apparently, there are all kinds, made by many different manufacturers, but I didn't know that - mostly because I didn't know the name of the thing. I kept looking for a scoring tool and coming up with nada. It's called an embossing stylus.

Round tip - doesn't that just make sense?

The trick, you see, is in the tip. It's round. Because what else would make it if you're using it on paper and don't want it to tear? You wouldn't be dumb enough to make it pointy or serrated, would you? Well, pointy and/or serrated is what you get with all of the (three) score boards that I bought.

I'm using the middle one that has a small(ish) ball on one end and a large(ish) ball on the other. I've use the smaller end so far (on the Martha Stewart scoreboard and the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch board). There are two more with pointier ends and another balled end, but I don't want to grab the pointy end by mistake, so I use the one with two balled ends.

 Why more stores don't carry them, I have no idea. And why online crafters don't tell every newbie to get one of these - and pronto - is also a mystery.

So I'm telling you. Go on Google or Yahoo or Etsy or Ebay or whatever you search medium of choice is and get one, or two, of these. They'll save your paper, your temper and your loved ones eardrums.