Snowflake rosette and borders dies!

So, those Christmas cards... well, if you are organized it would be a would idea to start them now. Here you have an idea using one of my latest dies for Sizzix, Thinlits Die Set 9PK - Winter Borders & Rosette - 659978.

The set consist of 9 dies, three borders, a rosette die, a snowflake, a flower and three circles. To make the rosette you will need two lengths of it, so just die cut it twice.

You can make it larger or smaller, but I like my rosette to have eight points, so I trim two on both. Then I glue the ends.

I die cut two circles to secure it in place. I used cool glue gun, a big blop of glue in the centre. 

I pushed the center to the glue. Then I used the smaller circle on top and pushed down to secure it in place.

One of the borders included in the set is the one I call Candy Cane as creates the diagonal lines of the sweet. This one fits nicely on a A6 card creating the apertures.

Perfect for a red card with a white insert. The second border has dots and stars and this one mesures up 6 inches tall and it does cut all four borders.

Quickly, I assembled this Christmas card with all the elements.

Good luck with your Christmas cards!

A crafty way to keep track of flower dies

I am not sure about you, but I do love and have loads of flower dies. So many that sometimes it is hard to keep track of all of them. For this reason, I came up with an easy reference swatch book that allows be to look through the different flower dies as well as allowing me to check whether some of them look good together even though they are from different sets.

This is the finished swatch book. Here is how I made it.

I die cut all my flowers using different scraps of paper. I printed (as my handwriting is atrocious) the name of each set for easy reference. I attached the name of the set onto thick acetate and then glue the flowers on the acetate. Each set is on a separate acetate.

 

Using a Cropadile, I made a single hole on the top left corner of all the acetates, and linked them all with a ball chain, which is easy to open to add more or rearrange order.

Here is some of the pages of my swatch book.

This is how it works, by layering different pages I can find out how some of them will work together.

Some of the possibilities were a complete surprise how well they look together.

One of my favorite combinations was this one above, using the Intricate flowers 1 and Intricate Flowers 2. Even though they have similar names I did not designed them to work together at all. But they work really nicely so I am very happy.

 

To make a simple card, I stamped a message on the same paper and die cut it using one of the Sentiment Tag dies. As I wanted it a little bit shorter I place the die purposely over the edge of the paper, one of the beauties of the Framelits I know exactly how it is going to look once die cut.

And that is the finished card. The flower is the central point and I would have only come up with this combo because my new flower reference booklet.

Butterflies card

I am really excited to be sharing my first project with my new collection of dies for Sizzix, Everyday Memories! It is my fourth release for Sizzix and I can not be happier about them.

Today I am sharing a card that I made using two sets of dies, Thinlits™ Die Set 8PK - Butterflies, Intricate 659971, and Thinlits™ Die Set 6PK - Butterfly Cards 659972.

As you may know I love butterflies, so I was really adament that this collection should fature a set of intricate single butterflies and one that cut an aperture with them on. the idea then came to make an optional outer frame that was 3 x 4" (perfect for pocket scrap booking).



You can die cut every element on their own or together to create different effects. Mixing and matching! I use low tack tape to secure dies in their place when I cant find my magnetic mat under layers of paper.



You can cut two (the inner aperture and the outer at the same time to create the effect on the right.

Other versions. As you can cut the the butterflies with the very thin edge, though it is very thin, or you can use it as a plain mat and layering. By cutting the outer postage stamp rectangle on its own, it creates a perfect under layer.



One of things I love to do is that elements of the collection mix and match perfectly, so of course the butterfly cards and the intricate ones match. this means that if you die cut the butterfly solid dies out of a contrasting paper and place them under it is a lovely detail.

PLEASE note that the layering of the dies on the left photo is just to showcase how the dies match, DO NOT die cut them through the machine overlapping as it will damage the dies!



I attached them with foam pads that come in a thin straight line, perfect for this project.

Finally I added it to the card, tilted over the edge. I stamp the message on a little Sentiment tag from the Sizzix Framelits Die Set 12PK - Tags, Sentiments 658612.

I hope you like the new collection!

Paula