material alternatives to craft wood sheets?

I was using popsicle sticks for a while to do flooring, cutting with wire cutters which was working okay. I got some "bass wood" crafting wood sheets off Amazon to start using for furniture but my xacto knife won't go through it without sawing it for 15 minutes, and I can't even fathom doing curves of any kind. I couldve swore I had seen craft wood sheets before that were super soft and could be cut with an xacto knife, are they called something specific? Alternatively, is there some sort of material I could use instead of craft wood? I have thin cardboard / kraft cardstock that works ok for some things but Its not very rigid and doesn't take paint very well. Does anyone know of maybe a master sheet of cuttable building materials? Its not super important that the material looks anything like wood as I can work my magic with paints. Any help or recommendations are greatly appreciated, my hands hurt! Lol