Technique Tip - Partial Die Cutting

Hi everyone, thank you for stopping by. I hope you are having a great day.

Today I wanted to share a super fun technique that will allow you to get a bit more out of your dies. We typically use our dies to simply cut out the image. Whether it be a greeting or sentiment or an image that we colour. But you can also use you dies to create a whole new look for your card.

For this card, I have the love die as well as the decorative square. I wanted to create a fun window, where the word would be in the middle. There are some super awesome dies out there that do this, but I don't happen to have them. That being said, I didn't want to not be able to create the look.

To begin, I took the decorative square and used some low tack tape to hold it in place. I put the Love die over top of it, and used a pencil to mark where I wanted the words to attach to the sides of the window.

I lined up my top cutting plate with those marks so that the only piece that was actually between the plates was the upper portion of the window, and ran that through my Big Kick (which is just like the Big Shot, but blue). I then repeated the process on the bottom half. At this point I have two cut edges that do not meet.

The Love die only cuts the smaller love in this picture, so I removed the decorative square and put the word die back in place, lining it up with the marks I had made previously. I then used a pencil to very lightly trace around the die, this will show me where the "shadow" of the word die will be. I used my X-acto knife to cut those lines, being extremely careful to not cut through where I wanted the word to be attached.

Once that cutting was done, I was left with the basic window you see above. I then cut a piece of foiled paper with the word die, and set that in place over the shadow I had created.

For the rest of the card, I used some Tumbled Glass and Salty Ocean Distress ink to colour the panel, and adhered some foiled hearts I had sitting on my desk. Behind the window, I adhered a piece of white Tulle to create a frosty look to my window.

I adhered a piece of yellow cross-hatched paper directly to my A2 sized card base to show through the window. I mounted the panel with foam tape, to give it some dimension.

I hope you like today's card and are inspired to create something of your own. If you haven't all ready, please follow me over on the right side bar. If you are viewing this via mobile device, scroll to the bottom and click "View Web Version" first. You can also follow me over on Facebook. Toss me a line in the comments section below and let me know what you think.