Donna T Crafting: AECP Level 1 - Easy Die Cutting Techniques

The lesson I did today for the Altenew Educator Certification Program was called Easy Die Cutting Techniques. When I started watching this class, I was saying to myself.......I die cut all the time, this will have nothing for me. Well, as we are often told, there is always something to be learned.

Many of the techniques I was familiar with, but I don't use them, so this was a great class to really think about creative ways to use die cutting. As I watched each lesson, a plan for a card slowly formed using two of the lessons combined. These were the Negative Die Cutting lesson and the Inlaid Die Cutting lesson.

For this card, I used the Altenew Fresh Bloom Stamp and Die Set. My goal here was to have my main flower in the center, negative die cut the leaves and inlay the small little flower sprig off one side. And this sounded easier in my head than it really was. It took me several attempts to get this right. Most of my issues were that I was in a hurry and I really needed to slow down to get everything right. And I did just that. I put it away, went to a meeting I was needing to get to and finished when I got home.....success!

Using black ink, I stamped the A1 outline image in the middle of a white card panel (actually I did this several times due to my errors and kept a couple to use along the way). Now comes the fun part. I wanted to get my die cutting right before I spent my time filling in all the colors.

I laid down the leaf die cut the way I wanted it, leaving enough space around the edges to trim down the card later. I put tape over the area I DID NOT want to cut to hold it in place. Then I put this on my bottom plate and I taped the card panel onto the plate at an angle so that I could have a straight line where I wanted to stop cutting. I then put my plastic shim and top plate over the area I wanted to cut, stopping the edge just before the tape. I then put this into my die cut machine, with the single plate section going first and careful to hold everything into place.

This part took several attempts as I would put the plates in the wrong place (thus cutting out the section I did not want cut). Or I put the plates too close to the tape and it would cut far into my flower. Finally, I had all 3 areas cut where I was satisfied. I then took an exacto knife and carefully cut around the flower to remove the die cut pieces. I was careful to save the flower sprig for a later step as well.

After that was done, it really was pretty simple to finish up this card. I used the remaining layers of the flower stampe to fill in the colors (see layers and colors below). I also stamped a second one, not worrying about lines too much so I could use it for several checks in later stamping.

I then picked out a green card stock for under this panel. I cut the white panel to 3 3/4" x 5" and then cut the green panel to 3 7/8" x 5 1/8". I probably should have left it bigger and cut it down later, but this worked fine for me.

I taped the green panel where I wanted it to the white panel on one end to make a hinge. I then put this in my stamping tool and lined up my leaf outline stamp (B1) into the open area. I put some acetate on top and did a practice stamp and it looked pretty good. So, I opened the white panel and stamped the image on my green cardstock (note the white panel is still hinged to the green to keep everything aligned). I did this a second time for the other leaf grouping.

Next came the sprig. I tried a black outline and a bright pink outline on my practice card and decided on the black. I then used the sprig die cut outline on my practice card panel to figure out where to put my stamp on my stamping tool. Once I was happy, I put a small piece of tape on the back of my real die cut piece, put it where the die had cut on this practice one and stamped the image. It worked great!! I then colored the sprig with 3 Copic markers (colors listed below).

I picked out a coral cardstock for my layer under the green and cut it to 4 1/8" x 5 3/8". With some that I had left, I cut 3 more sprigs in the coral and a small square that would go under the sprig opening. I took the 3 die cuts in coral and glued them behind the colored piece and cut off the bottom that would not be used. I then glued the coral square under the white card panel to cover the sprig opening. This way if you see under the raised sprig, it will still be the coral color.

I also used my green Copic marker to add some highlights to the leaf stamped images on the green cardstock. Then I glued my green panel to my white panel, making sure to glue all the little pieces and making sure to keep the leaves aligned. Then I glued that to the coral panel and then all that to my white card base.

I popped the little spring up on some foam tape and put it in opening cut for it (Inlay Die Cutting). The last step was to pick a sentiment from one in my stash and I stamped "Sending Hugs" in the bottom right corner. I added a few jewels to fill in a few places as well.