Maya Road Chipboard: A Review

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Reported by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer

It’s a fact. The scrapbooking industry has gone wild for chipboard. And, Maya Road is one of my favorite manufacturers of all sorts of chipboard shapes, alphabets, and books. Their design team blog is always full of great ideas and a ton of project photos.

If you’ve never used chipboard before, here are some good things to know. What is it? I found the following definition at about.com:

Definition: Chipboard: (noun) Pressed fiber thick paper, usually made from recycled paper. Chipboard is used for the backing of notepads, backing of stacks of business forms, and in scrapbooking used to ship stacks of sheets of paper to scrapbook stores. Some manufacturers are making acid-free/lignin free chipboard specifically for use in making scrapbook pages.

As an embellishment, it’s an easy way to add dimension to a page. You can alter it using a myriad of methods or simply use it “as is” – often referred to as “raw.” Some methods including: painting, stamping, covering with patterned paper, sanding, and embossing.

Chipboard mini albums are great because the chipboard can take a lot of abuse. It’s thick and hardy and stands up to paint, ink, and heat without warping. Many scrappers have discovered that a Crop-o-Dile by We R Memory Keepers is the perfect tool to use with chipboard albums because it easily punches through the chipboard. I use mine all the time.

Here’s what I like about Maya Road Chipboard:

1. Quality

The quality is excellent. There are multiple thicknesses of chipboard and Maya Road manufacturers very thick chipboard. Their shapes and books are about 1/16th of an inch thick. I also appreciate that the edges are always clean and well cut.

2. Shapes

This is purely a taste issue, but I really like the chipboard shapes Maya Road offers. I find them infinitely useable. My favorites are their scallop ring book and their scroll corners chipboard set.

3. Selection

Maya Road has a wonderfully complete line of chipboard products. I know I mentioned this at the beginning, but they offer several different alphabets and sets of numbers, a wide variety of shapes – some literal (flowers) and many decorative (Celtic knots) – as well as an enormous array of chipboard books. The books not only come in different shapes, but are bound in three different ways: (1) ring bound, (2) chain bound, and (3) board book style.

4. Easy to Find

This is no doubt a major reason why I have used so much Maya Road chipboard: it’s easy to find. But, I appreciate the fact that when I love something, I can find it again. It hasn’t disappeared. Most online retailers and local brick-and-mortar stores carry Maya Road products.

5. Price

With product prices skyrocketing, I find the Maya Road prices extremely reasonable. Most of their shape sets – ranging from 36 to 72 pieces – cost about $7.99. That means that each piece in a set of 36 pieces costs you about 22¢. The books are priced anywhere from $2.99 to $7.99. The alphabets are about $8.29 and come in adorable metal lunchboxes. Which bring me to…

6. Packaging

It’s a bad habit, but I sometimes buy things just because the packaging is cute! I love and adore the little lunch boxes and metal containers that the Maya Road chipboard comes packaged in. I especially love the packaging because you can reuse it – either to store other things, or even as an art object itself, or housing for an art object (i.e. as a shadow box).

7. Versatility

While Maya Road chipboard is thick and hardy, it also can be cut with scissors and hole punched using a Crop-o-Dile. You can cut apart the albums to create wall hangings, or to use on a scrapbook page. You are only limited by your imagination.

Here are a few projects I’ve created in the past year using Maya Road chipboard:







Let us know what you think of your Maya Road Chipboard. Leave us a comment! We love to hear from you!