I am a newbie wanna be to this craft,since it would be perfect for charity work.A couple??s The only vinyl placemats I have seen have a gloss vinyl printing of a picture of some sort on the front & a plain back,what side do you stick the graphic to? And also-your cutting looks very detailed-do you use an exacto knife? Thanks for any info! Willow(o:

My husband gave me my Xyron 850 for Christmas. I love it! At the time they were having a special... when purchasing the 850, you got the 500 sticker maker, free. (We gave the 500 to our daughter who is also into scrapbooking.) Otherwise I would have gone with the 1200, I think. I am a teacher and have used it for making books and materials for class. I don't know if it's the teacher in me and years of experience with using every inch of laminating, but I don't have much waste at all. Since it has a hand crank, you have great control over the speed in which materials go through the machine. You can place items close together to prevent the waste you were referring to. If you want tiny punches as stickers or laminated, put a whole sheet of paper through the machine and then punch your punches. My husband was also hesitant when I showed him the machine for the first time but now he sees how many uses I have for it and is glad he made the purchase.

If you go to this site it has scrapbook product reviews on it. Go to Misc. and at the bottom of the screen is reviews about the Xyron machine. I belong to a mail list that has much about Xyron machines and they were saying that this spring they are coming out with small machines to do stickers and die cuts for scraping. This way you don't have the expense of the bigger machine and the waste if you only need a couple of things done. I think they said the machines would sell for under $50.00. I have seen them anywhere from 100 - 180 dollars. Hope this helps some of you out. Here is a link that might be useful: Scrapbook Product reviews

I have the 1200 and LOVE IT! I don't usually have a lot of waste. Because I can feed at my pace I feed one page then another etc with very little space between. If I'm doing 8 1/2 x 11 then feed with the 11" side first. If you want to punch small items, feed a whole piece of paper and then punch. PB Plastics had the 1200 for aprox. $130 and the 500 came free. I don't know if they still have that offer. Good luck on your decision. Hilary