It’s almost 11 months now, that I have been using Multipurpose Glass Mat by Get Inspired, manufactured by Dadarkar Arts. Many of you who have attended my online classes and have seen me working on this mat continuously in each of my class, doing various techniques. I often get queries regarding the same and find many crafters still sitting on the fence and not able to decide which glass mat to buy as there are many more glass mats available in the market. So I squeezed out little of my time and decided to share my experience of using the glass cutting mat by Get Inspired. I hope this post of mine can help you decide which one can work best for you.
This is the best crafty tool which I highly recommend to all the crafters around. I really like it more than I anticipated it would be. To me, now it has become my all in one workspace with all the clean and clear measurements. I’ve tried several self-healing mats & wasn’t much thrilled….at least with the ones that I had because of their maintenance. I then came across this glass mat & as far as I’m concerned it’s the best out there!
Give it a try, you won’t regret it ….for sure!!
I can cut on it, draw on it, glue on it, spread paints out on it or I must say, can enjoy any creative mess without taking much time on its maintenance and cleaning. I can use any medium and most of all the heating tools that I use more often while crafting. Nothing sticks on it and comes off easily leaving it as new every time. I have really fallen in love with this cutting mat, the day I started working on it. It’s actually the ONE STOP SOLUTION to all the crafty work surface problems that most of all crafters face during crafting. I have been working on self-healing cutting mat past many many years and it was working perfectly well for me as well as far as working on techniques was concerned but cleaning and warping were what I was facing problems, I love to play with lots of mediums and often love to try my hands on different art forms where lots of heating is needed. Multipurpose Glass Mat by Get Inspired worked great for all my crafty needs.
Recently, I did a Live Video session and shared tons of techniques using this glass cutting mat and shared my personal experience of 11 months of its usage. You can scroll down and find the video at the end of the post.
Also, I am here to share a write-up version of the pros and cons of the Get Inspired Glass Cutting Mat and my personal review about the same and why I highly recommend it. But before you read on, here ‘s something you need to know.
Disclaimer:
I do not do paid reviews and I never promote a product just because a company has asked for. I only review, recommend and promote what I personally love to use.
I do not endorse this product in any way whatsoever and I’m not associated with its manufacturer as well. Also, I am writing this review after using the product regularly for almost 11 months now.
PACKAGING: It came intact in a clean cling and neatly packed in a thick sturdy cardboard box specially made to size for the glass mat and then wrapped within the layers of bubble wrap and again heavy cardboard box. It reached me safely without any damage.
SIZE OF THE GLASS MAT:
In all, it measures 23 1/2 ” by 14″ and have a metric workspace of 23″ by 13″, nearly A2. That means an excellent workspace that a crafter needs for any project. It’s large enough to block a full 12″ by 12′ scrapbook page very easily and still have a room for all our crafty mess on one side. I work mostly keeping my projects in the center and use the right side (that is basically the metric scales for cards) as my color palette or for keeping my other crafty essentials like glues, tapes, stickles or embellishments.
All in all, I am always having a good, neat and clean sufficient surface to craft. What else we crafters want…I love it all!!
TOUGH GLASS SURFACE: This is manufactured out of tough heavy tempered glass which makes it sturdy enough to handle all the hazards we crafters make during crafting. It won’t slip, break or have scratch ever. Use any medium, water-based, alcohol-based, any inks glues, and gels, nothing stays permanent and cleans up so well by simply wiping off the surface with a wet cloth or wet wipes. Plus, you can apply direct heat over it with your heat gun, hot glue gun or fuse tool. Moreover, the sturdy and its tough surface allow us to put pressure if needed. We generally need little extra pressure when using large background stamps using Misti or while creating impressions on the foam from the molds for foamiran flowers.
EXTRA RUBBER CORNERS AND RUBBER FEET: It comes with 4 rubber corners to protect the edges and has good non-slip rubber feet to keep it from sliding around. Also, it is slightly elevated on the table that means it can be easily picked if needed. Also, it will work perfectly well if you need to use your T ruler at any time. I generally don’t use T ruler when I m crafting but my daughter creates perspective views and she loves working on glass mat using T ruler.
DURABILITY: Love the durability of this glass top. Since it’s made out of tempered glass the possibilities of breakage are less. Many times when in a hurry, I keep my paper trimmer on the glass mat and do loads of cutting work but it leaves NO SCRATCH MARKS or cuts on the surface. Twice, I accidentally dropped my Tim Holtz large scissors and, thank god…nothing happened!! Constantly switching over surfaces in my small craft room is not very easy, actually. Now, this has become my one and only go to the work surface. I can craft comfortably without worrying about any weird crafty hazards.
Now, I often think, How have I survived to craft without this earlier?????
NEATLY ROUNDED EDGES: Edges are all smooth and nicely finished with NO sharp places and so there are NO risks of being cut with a glass mat.
MEASURING SCALE/GRID: The glass mat is so handy for measuring, my weak point, and makes cutting and drawing straight lines so much faster and easier. Aligning the papers correctly is no tougher and any beginner can do it correctly well. No matter if you are comfortable using inch scale or a centimeter scale, the Get Inspired Glass Cutting Mat has both on all the four sides and that too with its detailed measurements. On the right side of the glass mat, you are given different sizes of creating card base with their metric scale of card mats.in both rectangles and squares.
One more feature of this glass cutting mat which is another big plus point…all the markings are on the underside of the glass and very well secured so no matter what medium you use, nothing is going to affect the measurements keeping your glass cutting mat NEW FOREVER.
MEASURING ANGLES AND CENTRIC SCALE: The Measuring angles on the left side bottom corner helps to create diagonals easily. So if you are into the making of perspective layouts, don’t worry every time to reach for set squares.
Centric scale is easily identifiable on the white surface and can help you find the center of your cards or layouts and you can easily eyeball if everything is aligning in the center or not.
SMOOTH CLEAN WHITE SURFACE: The clean smooth white surface makes all the grid scales and measurements pop easily and much clearer…so much easy for a crafter with specky eyesight, like me. Most of my cards have inked backgrounds which I create by smooshing inks on the craft mat. The white smooth n clean surface of Get Inspired Glass Cutting Mat shows the true colors to pop which really make choosing right inks/sprays for my projects very easily. Also, NO need to worry about pulling out the brown craft sheet every time you want to create inked backgrounds. As far as cleaning is concerned, the inky stains can be easily wiped off using wet wipes or a damp cloth.
PERFECT FOR INK BLENDING: Whether you are a beginner or a professional crafter, the ink blending you do on Get Inspired Glass Cutting Mat is fabulous. No more splotchy backgrounds and no more cracking of paper edges…the ink blending tool moves perfectly well resulting in a beautiful blending of inks and I think that is what is the first preference of all the crafters around.
PERFECT FOR STAMPING: The glass cutting mat by Get inspired is perfectly leveled and don’t move from its place if you are heavy handed on stamping. Which really make crafting more enjoyable and easy for not only beginners but professionals as well.
SIMPLY NO WORRIES TO LOSE YOUR CLEAR OR RUBBER STAMPS: Most of all the stamp sets have small tiny stamps and all we crafters are afraid of losing them while stamping…especially the clear stamps. The glass surface of the cutting mat is perfect to secure those tiny stamps while working on any project.
GREAT CUTTING SURFACE: It’s just so perfect for all types of cutting tools and a wonderful surface to work on with all of the convenient markings on it. Any time you need to cut by hand & it must be precise you have to have a glass cutting mat. This one does the job. The blade slides perfectly well just like butter and yes leaving NO cutting marks on the glass surface.
EASY ALIGNMENT OF DIES TO BUILD A SENTIMENT USING T- RULER: When I was in college studying interiors we were taught using T- rulers and a pair of set squares for creating perspective views. Though now I m not at all into creating perspectives, I still use little of my learning here. It’s so easy to align and mark everything correctly with the help of T- ruler. It helps me gluing the sentiment die cuts perfectly on my final cards. Also, if you have loose word dies, you can simply align them on the glass cutting mat and T- ruler will help them not to move from their place and you can then easily tape them down using blue painters tape or washi tape. Everything is aligned so perfectly and easily especially when you are adding final touchings to your project.
GREAT FOR USING HEATING TOOLS: Be it using a heat tool while heat embossing or drying inky backgrounds or mix media projects, using fuse tool for making pocket sleeves for albums or creating shaker elements, using hot iron while creating foamiran flowers or ooozy poozy hot glue that we use more frequently in our crafty projects….glass cutting mat by Get Inspired takes it all without making any damages to the craft space. How amazing!!
USE IT AS A COLOR PALETTE FOR ANY MEDIUM: It can be used as a color palette for any medium like…watercolor medium, Solvent mediums (Archival Inks), oil pastels, ranger crayons, acrylic mediums, or permanent inks, wax mediums…..just anything!!
Simply scribble your water-based markers or dab your water-based ink pads and water them on glass cutting mat and create custom colors for your projects. So getting inky is too much fun!! All the inky mess can be easily wiped off with wet wipes.
Solvent-based inks which tend not to come off easily can be wiped off with hand sanitizers or propyl alcohol.
NO WORRIES IF WORKING WITH PERMANENT INKS: Permanent inks (solvent based) or alcohol inks have always left stains on the brown craft sheets beside cleaning with all good cleaners. These can easily be removed with hand sanitizers or stamp cleaners on Get Inspired Glass Cutting Mat. Tough inks like Stazon can easily be wiped off using stamp cleaner or regular propyl alcohol, easily available at local hardware stores.
PERFECT FOR MIX MEDIA ARTISTS: We generally mix thick acrylic colors with gesso to create custom colors, mix thick shimmer pastes with various gels, mica powders with gels and pastes and so many other elements like sequence, beads, glass glitters, glitter balls, etc to create textures for our mix media projects. Glass cutting mat by Get Inspired is a big yes to all your mixing needs to create various textures.
No medium sticks to its surface permanently. Yayy….!!
Use any medium…thick acrylic colors, glitter pastes, texture paints, gessos or chalk paints…simply spritz some water and wipe off using wet wipes or a rag. If tired and you have left your work surface without cleaning for hours…simply scrap it with media scraper, an old credit card or a razor blade and everything goes off without leaving any scratch marks. Working with collage medium and decopauge is so much fun, now. Isn’t it amazing!!
EASY TAPING DURING STENCILLING: If you are a stamper and love creating beautiful backgrounds using stencils, you must have faced a problem of holding the stencil on a place for long without any adhesive sprays. Actually, buying adhesive sprays might be heavy on pockets for few. Stencils are going to move unless you’ve got a very good hand ( or a magician). LOL…!! If you have a glass cutting mat, stencils can easily be secured using regular printers tape or any washi tape.
Moreover, while working with texture paints or heavy pastes during stenciling might warp the paper. Simply securing the paper using washi tape to the glass mat works wonders and helps in easy drying of textures without using any heat tool.
EASY WATER COLORING: Simply tape down your paper on to the glass surface using some blue painters tape or washi tape and enjoy the fun of coloring. Due to the large craft space available, you can create multiple backgrounds together and leave them for self-drying.
PERFECT FOR DECOPAUGE AND COLLAGE CLAY ARTISTS: I love to work with different glues for different projects. One of the huge advantages of this glass cutting mat is that I can use any glue on its work surface and do not have to worry about it sticking to the surface permanently. Either wipe off when its wet or wait for it to dry and simply scrape off using any scrappy tool. Instant glue ( fevi kwick) is the hardest glue that I use more often for creating my foamiran flowers….to my surprise I was able to scrape off its drops which got dried on the glass surface by simply scraping off using cutter without leaving any scratch marks.
PERFECT FOR PAPER FLOWER AND FOAMIRAN FLOWER LOVERS:
Not only for stamping, stenciling or mix media projects but the Glass Cutting Mat by Get Inspired is also perfect for paper flower lovers as well. I use archival inks for coloring all my paper flowers. All ink stains can easily be wiped off from the glass surface. So creating paper flowers is no messier if done on a glass mat. I also love creating foamiran flowers and use the glass mat as a color palette for scribbling my soft oil pastels and taking out acrylic paints. Nothing sticks to the glass surface and can be cleaned easily. Dried acrylic paints get easily peeled off and then wiped off with a wet kitchen towel.
Simply, be comfortable and enjoy the more fun of creating flowers on the glass mat and don’t worry about all the coloring mess.
PERFECT WORKSPACE FOR CLAY FLOWERS: The smooth white surface is so convenient to roll, shape, and cut if we are working with any dough as we do in clay craft. The newly introduced lightweight acrylic blocks by Get Inspired works great for making long, evenly rolled out stems.
PERFECT CUSTOMIZING OF NUVO CRYSTALS OR ENAMEL DOTS:
Nuvo crystal drops or enamel drops add eye-catching three-dimensional embellishments quickly and easily to your craft projects. This gorgeous 3D pearl enhances your finished project with the finish they actually deserve. Simply tape down the backing paper of masking sheets on glass cutting mat and create your own enamel drops using Nuvo Drops. Leave them for drying overnight and they are good to go on your projects.
TRY THEM….so easy peasy!!
I m sure you’ll love them.
Watch the video here with tons of techniques to use Supreme Quality Multi-Purpose Tempered Glass Super White Cutting Mat.
