At first when I encountered this strange, alien type machine, only the Xyron knew the mysteries that it held. I was but a child in the world of the Xyron 1200. Yes, I stood shadowed over by the great 1200, the largest of the Xyron line. I encountered the Xyron early in December. This time of year in Canada, many people spent time huddled around campfires roasting chestnuts. My fire sat flickering alone, as its glory and natural ploy had been drawn away by the great machine I had only heard referred to as “The Xyron.” The Xyron is an Adhesive Application and Laminating System, basically this thing can do a whole lot of stuff. 

         The Xyron that I purchased came with all of the bells and whistles, but yours may not have everything that I got. I had four different rolls of laminate. They are normal laminate, laminate & adhesive, permanent adhesive, and a repositionable adhesive. For the most part all are Acid Free, but I have heard that the repositionable adhesive is not. The Xyron is 100 percent cold lamination, for those who don’t know what that is, it means there is no heat used at all in the procedure of laminating an item. With other machines, laminating involves high cost and temperature. The laminating machine would have to heat up to operating temperature. Then and only then could you proceed to laminate what ever you wanted to. Then the laminator would proceed to melt a piece of plastic on either side of your items. With this process, these costly machines have one function and one function only: Laminating. The Xyron, although simple in appearance and operation provides the average scrapbooker with limitless possibilities. The possibilities of cold lamination allows you to laminate almost anything you want to. Before you had to worry about melting plastics and the possibility of burning your delicate papers, with cold laminating you need not worry because the temperatures are low, low, low.

          Now you may ask yourself how can I use the fabulous Xyron in my scrapbooking. I am going to tell you some of the wonderful ideas that I, the only male on the Scrapbooking.com team, have come up with. The Xyron lays a coating of adhesive on the back of the sheet of paper, along with a backing sheet that peels of to reveal the sticky adhesive. One idea is that you lay adhesive on the back of any odd shaped die cut. The adhesive can be used in much the same way that you would use a common scrapbooking adhesive. It allows you to apply adhesive to the back of almost anything. You can use it with your punch art. Apply the adhesive to the whole piece of paper and then punch away. A perk about the adhesive is that it cannot be seen on vellum. The lamination can be used to seal away papers and other things that aren’t quite acid free leaving an acid free barrier between your pages and these non-acid free products. Here's a fun thing to do. Anything that you can put on paper you can make into a sticker. Just load the Lamination and Adhesive into the Xyron and wind away. I have found that when working with the Lamination and Adhesive you have to turn the crank a little slower than normal. 

All I can say is to have fun with it. From this mans opinion, give the Xyron a try. Cast your doubts aside and raise your lamination high in the sky. For Xyron, I salute you.