Fiskars Self-Healing Cutting Mat review

Fiskars is a very popular brand of cutting mat in the crafting community, so I was eager to try out the Fiskars Self-Healing Cutting Mat. Designed to provide a smooth, stable and touch surface for cutting materials like fabric, paper and card, the Fiskars Cutting Mat provides all the features you’d expect – and some you might not.

Cutting mats may not be the most exciting or glamorous of creative tools, but if you’re someone who wants to manually work with prints, they can be downright essential. I was impressed with the Fiskars Self-Healing Cutting Mat the moment I took it out of the plastic – I loved its clearly printed grid and the textured feel of its surface.

But, while first impressions count for a lot, the proof is in the cutting. So, I laid out the cutting mat for my next print-cropping to see what it was capable of.

Specifications

In use

The Fiskars Self-Healing Cutting Mat looks and feels premium. It’s double-sided in black and grey, and on both sides the measuring grid is printed with excellent clarity. I like that within each square inch is a three-by-three square of dots, giving you an extra tool for lining up your materials and dictating your cuts. Also, it comes with a small eyelet for hanging on a hook or a nail – useful for keeping the mat nice and flat.

The version I bought was printed with a measuring grid using inches only. Fiskars does also offer cutting mats with a metric grid instead, and even some with both measurements, though this latter option doesn’t appear to be available in all sizes. It’s worth making sure you double-check which you’re getting before you buy. As ever, I don’t understand why more double-sided cutting mats can’t just give you metric on one side, imperial on the other. Anyway, the version of the Fiskars that I acquired, the 18 x 24”, also offers three angle lines – 30°, 45° and 60° – which is nice, as many rival cutting mats only bother with the latter two.

One thing I also appreciated when working on the Fiskars mat to crop a printed photo was the quality of the surface. It’s subtle, but it definitely has a bit more bite to it than many other comparable mats, and I felt that both my materials and my blade were less likely to slip. Cutting at an angle, I found that my blade left the surface looking pretty much spotless.

I wonder about longevity – this mat does feel noticeably thinner than rivals like the Dahle Vantage. Also, other cutting mat manufacturers generally love to boast about the provenance of their self-healing surface – their extensively engineered five-layer construction, etc – but I couldn’t find any such information from Fiskars. Of course, the only real test for a good cutting mat is time; I’ll be using this mat for a few more collaging projects, so I’ll update this review if my findings change.

Verdict

So far, everything about the Fiskars Self-Healing Cutting Mat has impressed me. I think the dotted-grid design of the grid is really clever, offering more ways to be precise without compromising on legibility by blanketing the surface with lines. I was impressed with the non-slip material too, and cutting a print on the mat was a smooth and easy process with no problems. I’ll be interested to see how the mat holds up as I keep using it!

See our full guide to the best cutting mats