E8: From Math to Crafts: Unveiling ScissorsPaperPaul's Creative Journey

Paul from Scissors Paper Paul started off as a mathematically minded individual who never saw himself as creative. However, when his son came along, he found a passion for sewing and creating various projects for his son's birthday parties.

He eventually discovered Cricut and started researching ways to create projects more efficiently. Paul's journey has led him to various opportunities such as presenting live on air for the TV Shopping Network and being flown in for various events as a Cricut Community Leader.

He also co-admins a Cricut education group with Nat, which has grown from 70 to 110k members. Their group is unique in its focus on education, which has led to engagement with Cricut groups from around the world.

 

 

Transcript:

Debbie:  Hey guys. Welcome to another episode of the Crafting and Business Podcast. Today, I have ScissorsPaperPaul, or just Paul. He is a crafter from Melbourne and I  love this podcast because I feel like I get to interview celebrities.

Because people in the crafting world that I have looked up to for a long time, I get to have a chat with, and I really hope that you guys learn as much from them as I do.

This podcast was such a great chat. We talked about everything from how Paul started crafting from a little boy playing with cardstock and pipe cleaners, and all that kind of thing, through to how he started presenting on live TV for a television shopping network on the Cricut. Another great example of taking crafting and forging almost a different path.

This chat was so great and I didn't want to cut out anything, so I'm going to break it up into two parts. So this episode is going to be the first part of the chat, and next week I'll release the second.

So I hope you love it. I hope you learn a lot. If you guys like this type of content, please tell me so I know I'm on the right track and you can send me a DM, you can send me a message. Spam my socials, I do not mind. I would love to hear from you.

So thanks again for listening and I hope you learn a lot. Thanks.

Hi Paul.

Paul: Hey Deb. How are you?

Debbie: Good, how are you?

Paul: I'm good as well. Beautiful day in Melbourne. Sun is shining. A bit dark in here ‘cause I had to shuttle some blinds ‘cause the sun was just beaming from everywhere, but yeah, stunning today.

Debbie: That's so nice. It's a bit dreary in Sydney, if I'm honest.

Paul: I heard that actually, yeah, heard you had a dreary weekend.

Debbie: But I actually don't mind it. Like the only difference is the kids go a bit crazy at home, at the house ‘cause all the toys are everywhere. But besides that, I don't mind it.

Anyway, it is what it is. But welcome!

Paul: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. This is the first podcast I've ever done actually.

Debbie: I’m honoured.

Paul: It’s going to be funny to hear myself back. Ugh, yuck.

Debbie: It is a bit awkward like the first couple times, and then you just get used to it, the more you do, I guess.

But I wanted to get you on because there's so many different kinds of people in the crafting world and everybody kind of follows everybody, but they don't really know your story, right?

Paul: Mm-hmm.

Debbie: And how you started with crafting and all of that, and I'm a bit nosy like that. I want to know all of the little things that kind of got you here.

Paul: Yeah.

Debbie: Tell me from the beginning, how did you start crafting and how did you find this amazing thing?

Paul: Yeah, well, and it is amazing. So let me sort of start from the beginning.

I was always one of those kids that would always like, “Mom, I –” ‘cause Mom stayed at home with us when we were little and it was, “Mom, play school tomorrow. I've got to bring like pipe cleaners, a water bottle and whatever.

And she'd always do her best to try and give me stuff so I could kind of follow along and make lots of little crafty projects, I suppose. But interestingly, as I sort of got older, I, well 100%, never saw myself as creative at all. I definitely have a more mathematical mind.

Debbie: Interesting.

Paul: Which I think is why Cricut, you know, without jumping too far ahead, which I think why Cricut resonates with me. ‘Cause it's software, it's exact measurements, it's all of that sort of stuff, which tick, tick, tick is good for me.

Debbie: It reminds me – I don't mean to jump in, but part art, part science, right? ‘Cause it's like a healthy mix of both to be able to do this.

Paul: Oh, absolutely – and that's the part that I really sort of had to learn because at school, we had something called Technical Drawing.

It would probably be under that graphic design now, or I don’t know what they would call it. But anyway, it was very much like basically drawing exact — with all the tools.

I thought I was going to be a draughtsman or a person, or an engineer or something like that. Again, mathematical, but not an architect. ‘Cause everyone was going, “Oh, I should be an architect.” But I never saw myself as having that artistic flavor.

And certainly if you saw the art that I made back in school, ugh. I'll tell you actually now, and I'm having this whole epiphany ‘cause I'm actually working on a few sort of art projects at the moment.

I think it was my mathematical side that was probably fighting with the artistic side because it had to be exact. It had to look like what I was drawing. I had to — whereas I realise now, it's not really just about what it represents. It's about that expression and all that sort of stuff.  It doesn't have to be perfect and so on. It has to be balanced –

Debbie: I’m totally the same.

Paul: Balance comes in a lot of ways. You've got – you know with color and mediums and things like that.

I was very lucky. It was obviously a little gay boy. My family were very encouraging of me expressing any sort of creativity. As I go along when I was like 10 years old and attend cake decorating classes with all of these 80-gear old women - which was really fun.

So a woman that my mom worked with would pick me up and drive me over there and we'd  do our thing and then make a few cakes on the weekend for a few friends and family and stuff like that. 

When I’ve got – now a 13-year old, and as he was probably about eight years old, or maybe seven or eight, and I was thinking I need a hobby and actually started sewing and again, exact measurements really spoke to me.

The hardest part was choosing fabric, but I'd make pyjamas and bedding and quilts and t-shirts and jumpers and bags and all sorts of different things.

Then I went to the US for my first trip ever to the – well, not the first trip to the US, but Disneyland and had the most amazing holiday.

Went through every Joanne's I could find, all of these places – Walmart, and bought everything like sewing-wise. I came all the way back.

Then a month later, my son's having an eighth birthday, which was Harry Potter, and I'm sitting there as I'm cutting out, I think it was 180 that I printed out wings that I then had cut out with prym scissors, and then hot glue onto Ferrero Rochers to make these little golden snitches, which was super cute.

Debbie: Snitches, yes.

Paul: I made a very basic –

Debbie: Did you say by hand?

Paul: Yes, with scissors, and not the insides just around them. But even that, I wanted to jump off a Quidditch Pitch afterwards. I was thinking to myself, there must be an easy way, and I made a piñata, Harry Potter, all of this stuff.

I did “printing cut”, which was – I printed out onto a cardboard some images that I found on the internet and cut them out with scissors, stuck them with skewers and put them on a cake. Then I started researching and I found all of these machines.

So there was Brother ScanNCut – well it actually came down to, for me, Brother ScanNCut and Cricu. They were the two that I was really drawn to. ‘Cause I actually had started to look at doing this basic card making, like stamps, all that sort of stuff which, gone by the wayside, had all the metal dyes.

Then of course I'm like, “why didn't I buy this all in the US?” Because none of it was available in Australia.

Debbie: Of course.

Paul: So I shipped it all over. I got the Export Air, and for anyone listening who complains when new stuff comes out, I bought the new Air and while it was in the air (and here's my New Zealand Alexa now coming out), the Air two was released. The machine I'd paid (oh god) a lot for, which was half priced –

There you go. I've been stung as well, happens to all of us. So that arrived.

Debbie: I felt the pain.

Paul: It was a hard pill to swallow initially, but then I thought, “what am I going to do?”

Debbie: Literally in the air.

Paul: It was literally in the air. Anyway, I fell in love. I was completely obsessed with paper. That’s really sort of like my scissorspaperpaul, ‘cause I was a paper crafter. That's what everyone knew me for when I first started in the groups. I loved all the dimensions of cards and the more layers, the better.

In fact, I was looking for a teal the other day and I think I've got eight different teals but not the teal that I want – that was too green, too blue. Anyway, look out for that TikTok ‘cause it was — I've got all the colours anyway, but not the colour I need.

Then I joined Cricut for Australians on Facebook, and that's when really strange things started to happen.

Debbie: Really strange.

Paul: Do I keep going or just —

Debbie: No, tell me everything. This is probably when the floodgates opened, right? It’s like a whole new world.

Paul: I don't even think I belong to any groups at all before Cricut for Australians. But anyway, it probably just popped up in suggestions or something.

‘Cause of course they weren't here, there was no Cricut represent, no staff here. There’s nothing in the stores. I think craft online, they import some stuff, so they had some stuff but it was very expensive.

So I think, I can't remember if it is either 70 or 700 members. I just can't remember what it was because I can't remember if it was like 70 when I joined and maybe 70 when I became a moderator.

Debbie: Ah I see, I see, I see. But still in the grand scheme of Facebook groups, either one – 17 or seven zero.

Paul: You knew all men, which we kind of still do now, but you knew everyone, like “oh my God, Deb, how are you blah blah?” “How are the kids?” “How's the dog?” “You know what's happening in New Castle (or wherever they lived)?

I was, “ugh” – I know that I would've been the most annoying person there because (and this is what I do with anything), I research, research, research.

So I was on all the groups now – but I mean, I was stucking in the information like a sponge. I had all the answers. So I was answering, I reckon probably, about 90% of people's questions. It just became my life really. In fact, my ex now ex pre-amicable, he was like, “can your foot your bloody phone down?”

Like honestly, every time you sit down, you pick it up. But I just loved it so much. It was just nothing that I'd ever thought I'd be into that I just completely became obsessed with. The girls – so Jules started it, she's Canadian, and then she brought Nat on as an admin.

Then they were going to, (and there's a joke in there because there's Canadian, Australian New Zealander walk into spotlight.) Anyway, haven't thought of the punchline yet, maybe one of your listeners has it.

So they got invited to go to the Cricut Mountain Makeathon, which happened only once, unfortunately. 

It happened once and it was in Portland, Oregon. So off they went to do that and while they were away, they were like, “oh, Paul, would you come on as a moderator, we are going to do this event?” I mean, because to this point, it's not like I knew them to say hi and stuff, but it wasn't like we were chatting out of the group or friends outside of the group.

They needed someone and they thought of me. So they contacted me and I'm like, “yeah, no, that sounds great. Sounds amazing.” I don’t know if you've ever been a moderator or an admin in a group when you first start, you're really scared to make decisions or do things or or whatever.

But let's just say you're all a pack of blah beeps – when they went overseas, oh my god, everyone turned toxic and the girls are messaging me at weird hours of the night going, “We’re so sorry. I can't believe this is happening.” All of the things I'm like, “should I delete this person? Do I block this person?”

“Do I just remove this?” It just went crazy. Anyway, that was a bit of a crash course and quickly learned what I needed to do then.

Debbie: Big course.

Paul: Then, oh my god. Then it just – oh my god, all happened. So we had a person contact us from Australia and say, “Hey, I'm working for Cricut and I just started and would love to meet you guys and get to know you.”

So we got connected to her and then we had been talking to Spotlight as well. We were connected a little bit to Spotlight in the roundabout way, but through that sort of process, we ended up coming up with this idea of doing our own little Cricut Mountain Makeathon.

In fact, we were going to call it, I think, the Cricut Makeathon Australia, or I don’t know what, something along those lines. So we asked Cricut if we could do that and they said no, which is fine. But we ended up coming up with the Cricut for Australians Craftathon, which most of your listeners should know, or if not, they need to start finding out. No spoilers.

Debbie: No, they know because I post about it, so they know.

Paul: Nobody really knows — then there was a new person. Actually the person did work out in Cricut, and there was a new person, Alicia, who a lot of you probably know, she not longer works, recently left, but she was amazing.

Anyway, we were booking out this tiny little hall in a church hall. It was dark, it was dingy. I'm down in Melbourne, Jules is in Queensland. Nat was near Bella so she could get to Brisbane to go and have a look. We were thinking, you know, at one point those girls were like, “should we just buy fabric and make curtains?”

I'm like, “stop.” ‘Cause originally for the event, we were cutting everything. So it was really, you just came along and you just made it up. Anyway, in the end, I just bloody hopped into this beautiful venue in Brisbane. Originally, we had, I think, 70 tickets.

We almost went up to almost a hundred people. I'm going to get the numbers all wrong now, but anyway. Then the new person in Cricut, she came, she hadn't even started, she came. We did everything, all cutting, everything. It was a fabulous day. People paid, but they purely went – it was a donation. It was only, oh my god, it was 20 bucks or something so cheap. 

When Cricut supplied us with all the materials and everything we did, we just had to cut in. It was the first Craftathon. It was such an amazing day. You met the members, we made these projects.

We got to really showcase really cool stuff and sheesh, the CEO of Cricut, beamed in a video live to do an introduction and say hi to everyone, and how important was Cricut for Australians. Cricut was only in Spotlight then, they're everywhere now and next year, oh my god, next year, I think we had almost 400 people.

We took out the entire (if anyone in Brisbane, it's a beautiful golf course and I can't think of the name of it.) beautiful golf course. We had a pop-up shop for the first time as well. We had a pop-up shop with exclusive discounts. We took out the entire place, the ballroom, all the breakouts.

Debbie: I think Nat talked about this in her podcast. She talked about it. I can't remember the name of the Golf Club either, but it was a great event.

Paul: I think they said, “So how many did we do this year? Should we do a thousand?” And we're like, “uh, maybe 400.” I think it was incredible.

I can't remember how many tickets were that year, maybe 40 bucks, but then again went to a charity. We did all the cutting, so one of my projects – so we all obviously had our different projects – one of my projects, I cut 100 mats for one in the project to be able to cut enough for 400 people to be able to make these things.

Plus we did, like our theme was events, so we had a table all set up, which was like a first birthday. We had a wedding and I mean, I was cutting out felt and sewing them together and making felt icy pole holders with the little fruits hanging off and amazing stuff. So, so cool.

So Ashish came from the US, flew here. He brought over one of the engineers that worked on the Maker, and we had Daniels more staff in Australia, so they came along as well. And then that was followed by a roadshow. I flew around the country with Cricut.

We did Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, doing these events when people, hundreds of people came through, getting Cricuts and having lunch. Amazing. Give lots of prizes and I mean, we were like the Oprah at our events, like prizes were always happening. 

Then COVID happened, so we went online, but that worked really well. We got to have almost a thousand people on the last one – that was really successful and obviously, something we are looking to continue doing.

Would love to do it face-to-face, but online we can reach a lot more people, and also just COVID and things like that. But with the crafts on now when it's online, you get a box, man, it's more expensive, but you get a box of full product. So it's not just like a little pack with your cutouts to be able to do and a little bit of transfer tape.

You're getting full roles of transfer tape, full rolls of vinyl, iron on, you name it. Cricut’s so generous, you know, Cricut cuties, amazing. They make all the projects free for us while we're doing for the event. Um, yeah. And then now Nat and I do our little bootcamps, which have been amazing as well, just like a full day.

And you know,it's a bootcamp, I think we did like 12 projects or something in the last bootcamp. So that's more intense because a lot of people attend the Craftathon and they're like, it's a bit basic, or I didn't really learn anything. ‘Cause it's more of a social, fun, get-to-know-you kind of, giveaways and stuff like that.

Then one day they said to me, “oh, you know the television shopping network? We’re on there. Would you – the girl that normally does it for us, she can't actually do the next show. Would you be interested? In my heart of heart, I was like a little boy just going squealing.

It’s like my excitement, but in my heart, I was completely beating inside my chest ‘cause I'm live, ‘cause it is live, oh my god, live television. So I went up there and I flew up to Sydney and I did my screen test and of course nothing worked.

So they had us in this room where they say basically the WiFi is terrible, which it pretty much is there anyway. But nothing worked, but I just kept going and I thought we'd do a whole show, but we did like 15 minutes and it was just banter and talk and just see how it went. 

And they went, “oh, we love him. We just want Paul to do all the shows.” So I used to fly up there once a month, at least, do a couple of shows. The first time I remember just, I told nobody, well, you know, nobody knew. I was so scared, ‘cause I thought, what if I just absolutely cracked my pants live on TV and just like, “no, going to walk off.”

Anyway, just the lights came on, did a deep breath, and I just went for it and I loved it. From there, I've started YouTube and things like that. But my first live show on TVSN, I was there for two days and the first show was going to be Wall’s: The Air 2 Bundle, and then the second show was the Maker Bundle.

The first show was the Maker Bundle, the next one was the Air 2. So you've got everything afterwards. I've been there a few times. I could store things, but initially I'd drag everything that I needed, like ship it. I'd taken my baggage and da da da. Anyway, 15 minutes in and they're like, “oh, we've sold out of the Maker, so we're going to move on to the next machine.”

I've gone, “huh?”, and they're like, “yeah.” and I'm like, “I've got nothing here. I've got nothing. I've got no, I've got all my, all my pre-work ‘cause I'd have it all in the different stages. If something didn't work, I'd already had it weeded or had a cut or whatever, and I said, “we're doing it, we're doing it.”

Anyway, it just went that fast. We didn't get – I flushed my way.

Debbie: So what did you end up talking about? You didn't – the machine that you're supposed to be talking about was sold out.

Paul: They flopped everything around got ‘cause they had their stuff, they're ready to go for their bundles. They have it all already packaged together. So we under the package and we displayed it all. I just sort of pushed my ways if there's some stuff I could do on it and others I could just sort of show as I was talking about the features and benefits.

Debbie: I mean, that's testament to like you as an expert. I hate the word “expert.” Do you know what I mean? I often say I'm not an expert, I'm a bit of a nerd because as you said, I consume everything when I'm interested in it.

So when I can talk about it on the fly, “Okay, sure. I come across as an expert. I'm really like dying inside.”, right? But you know this.

Paul: Yeah, exactly, and a lot of it is what I know. So as in, this is what I would do. I'm not saying it's the right way. I'm not saying it's the best way, right way, maybe you've got a better way.

But if someone asks me a question and I have the answer or an answer, I'll always give it. I'd never give advice if I wasn't sure. As a group's grown, that's why we have moderators because we do sometimes see people, they've got the wrong end of the stick. They think they know the answer, but actually it's wrong.

Over the years, I've learned how to actually come over the top of that politely. ‘Cause it's very busy. Socials can be very blunt. I don't mean to come across as rude, but often – there's no “hi, how are you?” Blah blah, blah. You've got to sort of finesse it that way.

You've just got to go with it and things go wrong and you make mistakes. That's the thing – you make mistakes, I make mistakes, I forget to mirror, I glued accessory cards. Love the little box cards, you know, fold flat, fold out. I gave it to my friend, she gave it to her daughter and she opened it up and everything was facing sideways, not front face.

Do you share them? Yes. Sometimes I do share them, but no, I don't tell you when I'd forget to mirror. But we all make mistakes. What you've got to do, you got to hopefully learn from it. You're making a mistake every time then I'll say to people, “now, do you know what I do?”

“Because I do forget, right?” If I'm designing for an iron on project, I flip the design.

Debbie: So do I. I flip it in Design Space. 

Paul: Yeah, save it back to front. I have to remember now if I share it in the community to flip it back again so people don't cut it in the right way by flipping it here.

Debbie: Oh, the right way.

Paul: Oh, by mirroring it. Because I forget – that's one thing I forget quite frequently or known to. So that's what I do. It's a nine on a project. You're in reverse and they don't have to worry about it.

Debbie: We do this every day and you forget these tiny things. I'm pretty sure this shirt I've cut, this is probably the third time I cut it. Because it's a layering project, and I think I designed this in Illustrator. I'm new to the program in Illustrator, so how many times I –

Paul: I so love Illustrator. Love Illustrator.

Debbie: I love it, I love it but I'm still learning. Theen when I sent it to cut, it cut wrong, and then I didn't flip it. But it's every day, right? This is how you learn. So, oh, but a lot of people, to me, eyes, you know, I lose dots all the time. Oh God.

Paul: Dots. Dots in the eyes. I lose dots all the time. I find them eventually, always. I don't think I've ever had a dot eventually. Then there's a name for those things. I can't remember what it is, but I find it stuck to a shoe or my face, or it just pop up. One day, I'll be like, “oh, what's that on the pop line?”

Debbie: See this? That's a piece of vinyl, piece of HTV that was just on my desk that I just found.

Paul: I don’t sell, so do you think I'm cutting another dot? No, I am not. Even, I think, one – I made one for my Mum.. Mum just had a double mastectomy and I made a t-shirt in honour of her while she was having a surgery in Brisbane. They said memories are worth more than memories, and one of them’s got a dot and one of them doesn't and it's like, meh, homemade.

Debbie: I love it.

Paul: You can't buy that in a shop, can you, hopefully.

Debbie: Exactly, and actually a lot of people – so this entire podcast is based on people that want to start a business or see where this crafty thing goes, right?

Paul: Mm-hmm.

Debbie: The one thing that I always hear all the time is it's not like they're scared of posting or they're scared of making the thing because it's not perfect, and this is a perfect example of that, right?

You've obviously made a success in crafting in a different way that is not typical, right? So you've obviously done amazing things with your presenting and tutorials and all of this stuff. Build your online committee, which is a completely different way to the typical “make one item, sell it to a local market.”

Paul: Exactly. Yeah.

Debbie: Also like if you are telling us as this really successful Cricuter, this crafting person that it's okay not to be perfect, then it's okay not to be perfect.

Paul: Yeah. I've got to do a bit of relaunch with my YouTube channel, which I really do. It's just during COVID and everything, and I separated and life got on the way, but things are back on track now. There's just something to do and make, and it's just finding time sometimes. So people that know me, they know me well, know that I don't make for making’s sake, I make for someone or some purpose.

Even if Cricut, if they send me new materials, they're like, “oh, can you make something with this?” I'm like, “okay, whose birthday is coming up?” or “who’s going make something for?” 

There might be, like with all the colour-changing projects at the moment, I've only used the iron on, and I love the iron on, but I've used it on cars, I've used it on bags, but I haven't yet put it on a water bottle or anything ‘cause I don't have a water bottle to make someone.

But when that time comes, I'll be like, “oh, I'll use that colour change or –” things like that. But also, I used to go live every week on my channel and that's where I try to be a little bit unique with my channel versus others. I fail all the time.

Things just didn't always go right and and you'll hear me in my videos going like, “oh, once again, I forgot to put your paper down for the infusible ink or what –” and then reiterate what its purpose actually is. So I'd say, “it's to protect your heat press or your EasyPress, making sure that I haven't got dye leaked through” and things like that.

You'll hear me all the time over the years, “Do as I say, not as I do” because it's not that I'm just one of those people that won't follow instructions. I'm very much not that person. I'm like, “yes, give me instructions.” Yes, I forget. I just forget like everybody else.

Debbie: Mm-hmm.

Paul: You make mistakes. You hopefully learn from them and when people post in the group as well. I don't share a lot now because we used to share a lot and didn't wanna sort of take over the group. Now that we've got kind of our social stuff, we try to share, we try to motivate more, inspire through those kind of perfect creations and through socials.

But ask for help. If you have had another complete disaster, ask why. But when you do ask why, and I posted this a million times as well, I wish you could do more customised stuff in Facebook, but like, “what machine?” “How old's your blade?” “What mat?” “What material?” “What brand?” How many – “What mat settings have you tried?”

Don't just go, I'm about to throw it out the window because I'll be around your house with my washing basket catching that machine, because 99.9% sure, it's not the machine and it's the same goes, I call it “ethnic”, and this is going to sound really, really horrible, but it's not, “problem in chair, not in computer.”

So more often than not, it’s like – I was cutting something the other day and I just thought, “oh, that paper”, and this is what you start to know as well. New blade, pop in a new blade. Perfect. Now if you're telling me, “oh yeah. I’ve had the machine for six years, I'm still on the first blade.”

I mean, I know the Cricut ones can be expensive, but if you are changing it once every six years, that's what, 12 bucks every six, $2 a year? I mean, if you're using it all the time, it's not a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, then you'll be amazed.

So I'm always like, “change your blade.” Then if I never hear from those people again, that's normally what fixes it. But yeah, “is it the wrong mat?” is what to ask. Yep. That's all the groups are for. Ask, search –

Debbie: Exactly as well. Mm-hmm. And it's about, if you don’t know the answer, then somebody else will, and learning from the experiences of others.

Hey guys, I hope you learned a lot from that. As mentioned, this is the first half of my chat with ScissorsPaperPaul. The second half will be released next week. So if there's anything in this podcast that you have questions about, please do let us know.

You can find Paul on Instagram at @scissorspaperpaul or on Facebook as well, and you can find me at onlythesweetstuff on all channels.

I appreciate you. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.