•A range of 2D auxetic mechanical metamaterial sheets capable of exhibiting highly negative Poisson's ratio were produced using direct laser cutting.•Almost all perforated architectures show large stretchability and retain their large auxetic behaviour over significant strain ranges.•Influence of boundary effects and out-of-plane thickness on the in-plane mechanical properties were also investigated.•Re-entrant-like systems show anomalous boundary effects which result in non-uniform deformation profiles which could potentially make them ideal candidates for future implementation in sensory devices. The design and production of multifunctional materials possessing tailored mechanical properties and specialized characteristics is a major theme in modern materials science, particularly for implementation in high-end applications in the biomedical and electronics industry. In this work, a number of metamaterials with perforated architectures possessing the ability to exhibit a plethora of 2D auxetic responses with negative Poisson's ratios ranging from quasi-zero to large negative values (lower than −3.5), stiffnesses, stretchability and surface coverage properties were manufactured. These systems were produced through the introduction of microstructural cuts in a rubber sheet using direct laser cutting, and analysed using a dual approach involving experimental tests and Finite Element Analysis. In addition to examining the mechanical properties of the perforated metamaterials, the influence of edge effects and material thickness on the deformation behaviour of these systems were investigated, with re-entrant systems shown to possess anomalous deformation profiles which are heavily dominated by the boundary regions. These findings highlight the effectiveness of this method for the fabrication of auxetic metamaterial sheets as well as the large variety of mechanical properties, deformation mechanisms and load responses which may be obtained through what may be effectively described as simply the introduction of patterned cuts in a thin sheet. Display omitted