More adventures living on the edge or die cutting on the edge that is!!

Hi all,
Back with more adventures of die cutting on the edge. Of course since I am a go big or go home girl, I needed to make design for all 5 of the ornaments in the Ornaments Digital Art and each of them had to be a little different, well because I never do anything the easy way 😃.

The next card used the next ornament with the snowflake.  Whenever I think of snowflakes I think blue. I would have loved to make a card using sapphire cardstock but I didn't have any on hand.  Next choice glacier Cardstock not just because I had in on hand from my Holly Jolly project but because it reminded my of Alaska. Yes I am in the middle of 3 projects at once!!!

1. Die cutting on the edge Christmas Cards
2. Holly Jolly workshop
3. Alaskan Cruise 20 layout Album

and many more unfinished on the shelf.  These are just my active projects. Maybe I should have titled my space "Creativeness Run Wild"?

Back to the Die cutting on the edge Christmas Cards.  The first card took 6 1/2 hours to create.  I will admit, the first 4 1/2 were spend trying to do a swing fold card in design space.  I did not get up from my chair the whole 4 hours.

After sleeping on it, I decided to approach the task using the same steps it takes to make a physical card and things went much smoother.  This next card only took 3 1/2 hours mainly because I was going slower and trying to avoid the missteps I had using the pen instead of the scoring blade, etc.  Let me tell you the message to insert the scoring blade flew right by me and I had to back it up to check. Before I forget, one more lesson I learned was put the scoring blade or pen in before you insert the cutting mat.  yeah, for some reason I went into a mad panic and just tried to change the pen to the scoring blade. Yep black mark on only sheet of glacier Cardstock I had.

So 10 hours into the challenge I had a 2nd card made.

I nearly forgot that I why this card took such a long time.  I tried to cut the Merry Christmas saying out and it was a hot mess in the ~1 inch size.  Of course, it was meant to be cut out much larger but I had to give it a try.

Back to the drawing board making the inside of the card.  First I tried a second saying which was also a hot mess when it was cut.  Actually I tired creating the insides of both yesterdays card and today's card at the same time.  Big sigh, I was so many hours into this project with nothing finished so I had to figure something out.  I took a leap of faith and changed the saying to "draw" from cut.  As I mentioned yesterday, I had never used this feature before. Love, love, love it!

With this saying I switched to the Cricut metallic marker.  The "Merry Christmas" saying from CTMH City Sidewalks cartridge is an outline so I colored it in using the Cricut marker.

Products used

Z3605 Ornaments Digital Art

Z3366 Silver Foil Paper

Z3293 Clear Shimmer Brush

1385 White Daisy Cardstock

X6047 Black Cardstock

Cricut Silver Mettalic marker from Cricut Explore™ Metallic Pen Set

Saying "Merry Christmas" from CTMH City Sidewalks

I just got my clear shimmer brush and I am also in love with it.  Using it on the snowflakes was the easiest step in this project, lol.


Have a wonderfully crafty day and check back tomorrow for another installment of die cutting on the edge.
T

Living on the edge Or at least die cutting on the edge

Hi all,

My next attempt at die cutting on the edge involved the Cricut.

This is what die cutting on the edge (partial die cutting) is really supposed to look like.

I thought about how I would make the card with a physical die cutting machine then I applied the same steps to making a digital die cut on the edge.

I started with the measurement a standard card 8.5 in wide by 5.5 inches high.  Then I look at the ornament size and cut the width in half.  Next I subtracted that amount off the width of the card. I made my rectangle that size.  Lastly I welded the the ornament to the rectangle, similar to the way you would place a physical die on the paper using the washi tape and make the cut.

Unexpectedly the hardest part was the score line.  My first try I simply put the score line on top of the card base & grouped it together.  All my scores lines ended up in the corner of the 12x12 paper.  This was not at what I expected so I canceled the cut.  Next I welded the score line to the card base.  That did not work.  In the end I figured out that I needed to "attach" the score line to the base.  Just when I thought I had it right, I put the pen in the instead of the embossing stylis (scoring blade) in the "a" holder. Sigh, so I had to score by hand on the black pen line.

Here is my finished card. Thought I would love the red & green.  I wasn't so hot on the color scheme but I am in love writing using the Cricut.  I have never used this feature before. Love, love, love it!

I wanted to try silver & blue or red and gold or silver and gold; so on to the next attempt.

Products used:

Z3605 Ornaments Digital Art

Z3563 Diamond Stickles™ Glitter Gel

Z4224 Black Shimmer Brush

1385 White Daisy Cardstock

X6038 Candy Apple Cardstock

Z4224 Black Shimmer Brush

X6040 Clover Cardstock

Saying "Merry Christmas to You" from CTMH Season of Joy cartridge.

Have a wonderfully crafty day and check back tomorrow for another installment of die cutting on the edge.
T 

Living on the edge Or at least die cutting on the edge

Hi all,

Since I don't own that many dies, I decided to try die cutting on the edge with the mistletoe die that came with the nutcracker set (item # Z3535 Cedar & Pine—Cardmaking Stamp + Thin).

In the past I have tried die cutting first then stamping but my eyes are just not sharp enough for this method.  I find I am most successful if I stamp and then die cut.  Knowing this, I stamped the mistletoe along the edge of a white card base.  Then I partial die cut the mistletoe 1 at a time.

This left an edge of white paper that had to be carefully but off using an exacto knife.  I use a Cricut® TrueControl Knife™because I like the comfort grip.  I have never been good with an exact knife so I have been working with my TrueControl Knife™ since September to try to perfect my skills.  I have found that having a comfortable grip on the knife, a really good metal edge ruler (I use Tim Holtz) and a cleaning cutting mat are all key.  In addition to getting a new knife, I bought myself a new cutting mat Z2179 VersaMat™ as the mat I owned is a 20 years old, very stained, and glue covered.  I feel like I went hog wild treating myself to a new knife, a new cutting mat, and buying dies with the stamp.  LOL  The I thought if they last me 20 years like the last set, I don't need to feel guilty about my splurge.

I was really happy with the way the partial die cut turned out.  You can see from the picture that there is one place I die cut too far in.  One the 3rd mistletoe, I cut around the berries. Overall, pretty good really.

I hadn't thought about anything other than die cutting on the edge before starting so now I was looking at a pretty much blank card.  I wanted to make the hard work pop so I added the Candy apple cardstock behind the edge and of stamped the Merry Christmas saying from the Cedar & Pine—Cardmaking Stamp + Thin.  I was really liking the Candy apple red and green color combo. At the same time I was thinking it still looked at little bland so I added some Christmas Red Stickles™ Glitter Gel,  Ah, much better.  I really like the Christmas Red stickles.  I have owned them for a while but this is the first time I have used them.

I don't usually do challenges because I am easily distracted.  I dove in deep to this one.  Between the Nutcracker cards featured on the last blog and the Mistletoe card featured here, spend 5 hours messing around. Yes, that included watching 2 YouTube videos showing hot to die cut on the edge.  Darn those videos, they make it look so easy.  I am hoping reading this help help someone else cut some time out of the experiment phase and so straight to the success phase. :-)

Have a wonderfully crafty day and check back tomorrow for another installment of die cutting on the edge.

T

Living on the edge Or at least die cutting on the edge

Hi all,

I can't believe it's been a whole week since I posted.  I have been crazy busy trying to finish up my first workshop.  I wasn't happy with the fact that my layouts were so "bland" so I focused on pulling together the cutting instructions, welcome letter, and other workshop elements while waiting for a couple of "bling" items to be delivered.  That said, I have to admit I got sidetracked the last 3 days working on a die cutting on the edge / partial die cutting challenge.

Hmm, why did it take 3 days to complete this challenge??  The trick is to put the top plate on the portion of the die you want to cut.  In this case I was trying to cut the nutcracker on the outside edge of the card so the right hand side.  After I took the pic I discovered I couldn't get the plate/sandwich to go thru the machine this way.  Instead I had to put the side I was cutting first so all the plates are going thru, so the top plate is only covering half the nutcracker that entered the machine first.

Turns out cutting the nutcracker and the hat at the same time wasn't such a good idea.  First the hat was floating above the nutcracker so I just ended up cutting it off.  Second I bent the hat die.  SO, definitely a bad idea.

Looks ok from the front but not really attached well and doesn't look so nice from the inside.

Take, 2. I decided I would cut the nutcracker, then cut the hat separately.  Results were better but not stellar.  The left most picture shows how I put the plates thru the machine.  If you look real close at the middle picture you will see the there is a overlap of the cuts such that the bottom of the hat cut below the top of the nutcracker so there is a silver of paper that had to be glued down.   

The die cutting worked better but I wasn't happy with the stability due to the over lapping cuts.

I wouldn't be giving these cards out to anyone.  They were good experiments in that I gave both die cutting on the edge and coloring with my new Spectrum Noir markers a try.

Spoiler Alert - I have 6 more partial die cut / die cut on the edge cards that I completed in the past 3 days.  Each one better than the last.  Practice pays off, Keep reading each day to see them all.

Have a wonderfully crafty day and check back tomorrow for another installment of die cutting on the edge.

T