The Most IMPRESSIVE Way To Use Dies!

Hello, I'm very glad you're joining me. This is Jennifer McGuire, and I have some exciting news. Because it's December, that means it's the start of Simon Says Stamp Diecember. It is a whole month dedicated to our love of die cutting, which I'm very excited about because die cutting is definitely my favorite part of crafting. The best part of divorce is the amount of inspiration that is available, but also there are new releases, giveaways, and more. With this video, I am kicking off divorce by using the west divorce release from Simon Says Stamp, but also sharing with you what I feel is the most impressive way to use your dies creatively, and that is to make an impression. Now, I've shown this technique in past videos, but today I've got some fun spins on it that are really easy to do, and I hope you will try them. If you have a die cut machine, you should be able to try these techniques. Before I show you the techniques and many examples using it, I thought I'd do just a laid die cut card. I'm going to use these products for the technique next, but first I just wanted to create a layered card so you can see how the dies were really intended to be used. So we'll do this card, which is just layering, and then we'll kick off the technique and do lots of examples. I will be using the Simon Says Stamp Florence Medallion background die that you see on the right, and I'll be using the Florence Medallion die, which is just a small single die that's sold separately and can be used separately, but also lines up really well with this background die. I'll be using both of these on my first card, then doing the fun technique with just the background die. I thought it'd be fun to make some bright blue cards, and I grabbed three sheets of blue cardstock that work really well together as a light, medium, and dark. This is Rainbow Splash Lake and Sea, and then the darkest is Gina K Blue Raspberry, and I'll link to those below. But look how nice they go together. But use whatever you have. Any kind of cardstock would work here. This is just a layered die cut card. I'm using the background die to cut with my Impress die cut machine. You can use any die cut machine, and you will see me demonstrate with a few others throughout this video. Here I'm gluing together a couple of those background die cuts, just so that I have dimension, but you can skip that if you'd like less bulk. Before I start adding layers to this, I thought I would blend around the outside edge with a darker color. This is something I often forget to do, but it can be so impactful, so I'm glad I thought of it today. I'm using a large Altenew blending brush, which is great when you just want to do one color very quickly over a large area, and I'm using Simon Says Stamp Positively Saturated Ink in the Royal color, and I just put that around the outside edge. I did not take much effort to make sure that blended beautifully. It really will dry nice on its own, no need to fret over it. I then am gluing that onto the lightest color cardstock that I created into a note card that is four and a quarter by five and a half inches. I like that light blue kind of peeking through the openings. Next, I use the individual medallion die to cut from another piece of the blue cardstock, and I'm gluing those onto some of the pattern in the background. I really like that this additional die is available so that you can layer like this or use it separately. I also like that this will give me a laid background look, but I didn't have to invest in really expensive large background laying die plate, so this is a more reasonable way to get that laid background look. Next, I'm using the new Simon Says Stamp Fretwork Snowflake Die. This is really cool because it cuts some layers and then also that faux piercing around the outside edge. I will demonstrate the fun technique with this die later on, but right now, I'm just cutting it from white cardstock, laying a few together and gluing at the center of our card to create a focal point. Instead of white heat anchoring a sentiment strip for the center of our snowflake, I thought I would use a rub-on transfer from Hero Arts. These are so fast to use and give great results. Now, the pack that I'm using here has white sentiment strips with black letters and then black sentiments with white letters. I'm cutting out one that is a white kind of long rectangle with black letters, and I'm putting that onto a blue cardstock strip that's just a scrap I had leftover from creating the card. I can easily line this up onto the edge of that strip, then I just rub that down using a bone folder. You can also put it between your cutting plates and run it through your die cut machine, but I find this is easy enough to do. Once I've transferred that image onto my cardstock, I can remove the release paper and look how great that looks. So we have the blue outline, then we have the white rectangle and the black letters. Very quick and easy to add. I did a video on using these types of transfers. It was a live video, did lots of fun techniques. If you want to learn more about them, check out that video. I will link to it up here in the top right and in my description below. It was a lot of fun. So here we have our completed card. It's four and a quarter by five and a half inches. I did add a few clear gemstones to the snowflake just for a bit of sparkle. So on this card, we just have lots of die cut laying. We laid that background. We did a little bit of dark inking on the edge to make it pop even more. And then we did that transfer sentiment at the center. So this is how these dies were really intended to be used for layering like this. Now let's get creative and make an impression with those dies. So I have a couple cards to do, one with the background die and one with the snowflake die. Okay, let's do our first technique example. This one is with the background die and we're actually going to make an heat embarrassed impression. So stick with me, It's very easy to do. To do these techniques, you will need to set up your die cut machine to do embarrassing or dry embarrassing. That's making an impression with the die. I have found that every machine I've ever tried tells you exactly how to do this and most come with the flexible mat that is necessary to make the impression. So you can see this gray kind of flimsy mat here. That is what I use with my Spellbinders Platinum to make an impression and it came with this machine. I will demonstrate with other machines later on in this video. So I have my die cut machine set up and the sandwich is ready to go just following the manufacturer's instructions. I also have that background die with the cutting edge facing up towards the camera. I am gently applying VersaMark ink onto those raised cutting edges. I'm not pressing very firmly at all because I don't want the ink to go into the background of the die, just beyond the raised cutting edges. Now you could use a colored ink here but I wanted to heat emboss this impression so I'm using the clear VersaMark ink which is great for heat embarrassing. So now I put my cardstock onto that flexible gray mat and I'll use my anti-static powder tool. I will place my die carefully face down so the ink and cutting edge side down onto the cardstock and I'll run this through my machine again just following the manufacturer's instructions for dry embarrassing or embarrassing with a die. Because we have that flexible mat the die makes an impression it presses into the cardstock instead of cutting and it's a great way to give new life to your dies. Because I use VersaMark ink on the cutting edges of that die all of those little valleys, those impressions have a clear sticky ink in them. So I'm adding Hero Arts silver embarrassing powder on top and that will get into those little nooks and crannies and you may notice that some of the powder is on the raised areas too. That's because I probably pressed too hard with my ink pad and got some of the ink into the background of the die. That's okay, I've got a trick for you to clean this up. All you need to do is take a piece of scrap cardstock and just pull it back and forth along that surface. That'll knock the powder off of the raised areas and leave the embarrassing powder only in those little nooks and crannies, only in the impression that we made. Now this is gonna be a fine line of heat embarking here because it's just the cutting edge, that thin cutting edge that put the ink down as we made the impression. But it's really cool because now those little valleys have some silver shine to them and it really catches the light very nicely in real life. So we have that beautiful shine and amazing texture all using a background die creatively. You could absolutely leave this as is but I thought I'd show you how to add color into the details. You can see that darker blue color. This is really fast and easy to do. I used the same background die this time just to create a die cut and I'm using that die cut as a stencil. I'm lining up the little openings with the raised areas on the background that we just created using that impression technique. Over this stencil, this die cut stencil that I created, I'm applying blue ink using a large blending brush. Again, not putting a lot of effort into this, just putting color down. So this is a really fast way to color in the details on our impressed background. Now this is Gina K Blue Raspberry Ink and then I will come in with that darker Simon Says Stamp Royal and just put that around the outside edge. Once I'm done, I can remove that die cut stencil and save it for another project because it looks beautiful that way. I'm just going to use the impressed background that's underneath and you can see we now have that color in some of those raised areas. Just a fun way to step that background up even more. Next, I trim this background down to be 5 1 ⁄ 4 by 4 inches and I'm adding it to a top folding white note card that is 4 1 ⁄ 4 by 5 1 ⁄ 2. For a sentiment, I'm using this great new die set from Simon Says Stamp called Simple Hello. You have the shadow and the word hello yourself and I love how it fills across a card so nicely. I really like the style of the two new laid bird dies from Simon Says Stamp. On the left, we have the soaring whorl bird and on the right, we have the standing whorl bird. After trying both, I opted to go with the standing version cut from all white card stock. I'm also using this large blooms die set Look at how many dies are included in here. You can layer these up in different ways, so many different options. I'm using a few of the leaf dies from the set on this card and I cut them from vellum for a soft look. I'll use some of the other dies from that set later in this video. So I have my sentiment that I cut from white card stock and silver matte card stock and then my bird that I cut completely from white. I also have my vellum leaves, which I'll adhere by just tucking them behind our white hello and bird die cuts. That way you don't have any adhesive showing and I like that the vellum kind of sticks up a little bit. It really just adds to the fun of the card and I like those vellum die cuts because it kind of softens this card design. Now I made it so that the hello hangs off the side of the card, so I need to use a bigger envelope. This is an A6 envelope, which is a great option when you need just a little more room for things hanging off of your A2 cards. For the eye of the bird, I did add a silver gemstone because I thought that matched nicely with the silver heat anchoring on the background and the silver matte card stock I used for hello. So here's a closer look at that background. Remember we put ink on our die and then made an impression with that die. That ink remained in those pressed in areas and we added silver embedding. So now all the pressed in areas of our background have that silver shine to it. And we added that darker blue ink by using a regular die cut as a stencil on top of our impressed background. So you can see how this impression technique works great for background dies, but I thought I'd show you it works with other dies too, such as the snowflake we used on our first card. So I have my Spellbinders Platinum set up in the same way. We've got that gray flexible mat that allows us to make an impression with a die instead of cutting it. And I'll put my blue card stock on top of that mat. Now we have our snowflake die and I thought I'd use my anti-static powder tool on the die itself and my card stock. I did blow the extra powder off of the die and now I will ink the raised areas only, the cutting areas only by gently tapping my VersaMark ink pad onto it. So after I have applied that ink to the raised cutting edges only, I'll flip it over and put it onto my blue card stock. And remember that's on our flexible embracing mat. So when I run this through, It'll make an impression on my card stock And as the die makes that impression, it'll leave that bit of VersaMark ink behind in those little valleys. I wanted a softer look for this project. So I'm adding white embarrassing powder over our impressed image. Once I'm sure I filled all the nooks and crannies in with the powder, I will take a scrap of card stock to just scratch off any of the powder that's on the raised areas. This just is a fast way to clean it up. Then I will heat set it. Keep in mind that we put just a fine line of VersaMark ink. So this will end up with a fine line of white heat embarrassing left behind. But I think that detail is fun and it makes the impression stand out even more. I still want the snowflake to have a soft look to it, but I wanted it to be a bit darker towards the center. So I die cut using the snowflake to create a stencil, just like we did with our background. And I'm lining it up with the pattern that we just possessed or impressed into our card stock. It's very easy to line up. I'll tape it in place. Around the outside edges of the snowflake, I'm using Hero Arts Unicorn White Pigment Ink, and I'm just kind of dabbing that ink on to make it softer in that area. Then towards the center, I will add the Gina K Designs Blue Raspberry. So it'll kind of blend from that darker blue at the center to lighter at the tips, and then we'll have blue all around it. So this will help it to stand out a bit more, but still it will have a soft look to it. So in the end, we have that impression that gives us lots of texture. We have that fine white outlining that we got from the heat embarrassing, and we added that soft color inside just to make it stand out, gives beautiful results in real life. The rest of the card is quite simple, but I have some tips to share. Now that blue snowflake piece has a little bit of warping to it because we did that impression. Any time I have any kind of warping to a piece, I like to put double-sided adhesive on the back to adhere it. That'll make sure that it flattens on our card. So I put a piece of Altenew double-sided adhesive on the back, and onto that, I'll place some white stacked cardstock. These are three scrap white cardstock pieces I cut to be slightly smaller than our background. This will just give it nice raised dimension, and it'll hold up nicely through the mail. It's hard to see in the video, but that white note card that's peeking around the edge has an impression on it too, and this is one of the easiest, most effective ways to do this technique. I have always been a fan of background dies that create faux stitching or pinpoint patterns. So it doesn't cut any openings. It just leaves a pattern behind. This new Simon Says Stamp Snowflake Burst Pinpoint Plate is a great example. It cuts the outside edge at 4 1 ⁄ 4 by 5 1 ⁄ 2 inches. But in the middle there, those are just tiny little pinpoints that create a snowflake pattern. There are many dies out there like this that do faux stitching patterns or pinpoint, and they all will work for this. I have my Spellbinders Platinum ready to go to make an impression or emboss with a die just as we did before. So that gray flexible mat is on top. Then I'll take my note card opened and lay it down. And on top of that, I'll take my pinpoint background die and lay it down. This time I didn't ink it. I'm just making an impression, not adding any ink. When I run it through, look at the beautiful result. It looks like it's quilted. Beautiful texture. It's almost better than you can get from an embossing folder. And that's done with a pinpoint background die. Of course you can do this with any background die. It's just really effective with a pinpoint or faux stitching die. Now let's do a comparison. Right here on the left, I have that same die, but I used it just to cut from white card stock. So I did normal die cutting with it. You can see it leaves that pinpoint pattern. However, it doesn't have a lot of texture. It looks cool, but the one on the right is even better. That's the one that we just did where we made an impression with that pinpoint die. And I just think the results are amazing. Sadly, with this particular card design, I ended up covering a lot of that texture, but I definitely will use that die with this technique on future cards. By the way, I did add a blue raspberry mat to that blue piece just so it would stand out more. And I used the same color of card stock to add the sentiment strip right across the middle. That's Sending Cozy Hugs is a favorite of mine, and it's from the Simon Says Stamp CZ Design Let It Snow stamp set that I think came out last year. I also added a few clear little gemstones for a bit of sparkle. So you can see that impression on the white note card, and also the impression in inking and heat embarrassing that we did on the snowflake. So this example shows you there are multiple ways you can use this impression with the die technique. I have two more cards for you. One is showing a variation of this technique, and the other is a bonus card using some of the leftovers. Now this example shows that this technique also works with word dies. I really like this new Simon Says Stamp You're In My Thoughts die set. You have the words and then the shadow die. This time I'm demonstrating the technique with the Gina K Designs Intricut die cut machine. I did a video recently showing all about this machine. You can check it out up here on the top right or in my description below if you want. But I just wanted to demonstrate that this technique can be done with a variety of machines. You just need that flexible mat that is available for the different machines out there. In this case, the flexible mat is black. Instead of fussing with different sandwiches, this die cut machine has dials on the side, and I'm setting the dial to emboss, which means you can emboss with a die or make an impression with a die. On to the flexible mat, I have a die cut that I created from watercolor paper using the shadow die. I'll explain that in a moment. I'm using anti-static powder tool on both the cutting edge of my die and my die cut. I'll blow off the extra powder from the die and then gently tap that Versamark ink trying to get it only on those raised cutting edges of the You're In My Thoughts sentiment. I will then pick this die up and carefully place it down onto my die cut making sure I don't let it shift. I don't want it to shift because that'll just kind of drag that ink around and we won't get as great of an impression. So I'll just drop it in place, then take the top cutting mat, put it on and run it through my die cut machine. This is the same process I've done many times in this video. I'm just demonstrating with a different machine. All right, so once I run that through, that flexible mat in there will allow me to make that impression with the die So we have those impressed letters. We did put Versamark ink on this. So there's that clear sticky ink in the valleys of that impression. So I'm adding gold embarrassing powder this time. Then I will take a scrap piece of cardstock and scratch off any of the excess powder I only want it in the valleys. Then we can heat set that and that gives us that fine gold line and lots of texture. It works really well with word dies too. So if you have any word dies, definitely try this technique. I decided to change up how I added color to this piece and this time I'm doing watercolor. I'm using Tim Holtz Distress Ink and pressing it onto my glass work surface to get a little color down. I then have a spray bottle that has water and Ranger Perfect Pearl in it. Perfect Pearl is a pigment powder that will give us shimmer. So when I mix the ink with the water with the Perfect Pearl, we get a shimmer watercolor. You could use any kind of shimmer watercolors you may already have. This is just an easy way to make your own. I then am painting in my letters using that shimmer watercolor that I created. I first did the picked raspberry and then I'm moving on to the next color which is Festive Berries. I press them onto my glass work surface, add that bit of shimmer spray and paint it in place. At this point I realized I don't wanna just wipe away all that excess watercolor on my desk. So instead I'm taking a scrap piece of watercolor paper and I'll press it onto that leftover watercolor. And this is just gonna give us kind of a colorful splotchy background. It's a great way to use up that watercolor that would have otherwise gone to waste. Now I've moved on to Carved Pumpkin. I'll paint some of that color on and then take that same piece of scrap paper, pick up some of that extra ink just kind of building up a kind of fun artsy splotchy looking background. I'll continue to do a rainbow of colors across my watercolor piece there. Now each time I kind of overlap the color that I'm doing now with the last color I did so we get that natural blend of watercolor. I'm not a watercolor expert but this works really well for me so I thought I'd share it with you. Now you can see that scrap piece up at the top. It's building up lots of color all with that leftover watercolor. So that's what my bonus card will feature. Once I'm done I'll heat set both of these because I'm impatient and don't wanna take the time to let it dry so that I can move on to the next steps. From that scrap piece I will use the shadow die to cut from it. This will be again for my bonus card and then I cut the words you're in my thoughts from white cardstock to go on top. So now we have the pieces for two cards. Let's finish off this card first that uses that impressed sentiment where we did the watercolor. For the background I just wanted some tone on tone flowers using the blooms die set I showed you earlier. I have some Simon Says Stamp Fog cardstock I have a piece cut to four by five and a quarter inches. Then I have a bunch of die cuts from the same color of cardstock and I'm just gluing them together onto the background to cover it. I will do some laying pieces all with the same color of cardstock. So this will just add some interest on the background of our card but not be too polarizing from that colorful sentiment. I chose to use Simon Says Stamp Fog cardstock because it's a very light gray and it's a nice alternative to white cardstock. A cream or ivory cardstock would be nice too. This will just give a little bit of contrast but not be too overwhelming. So I did add my sentiment right there on the center and that's it. So we have the texture of that embarrassed or impressed sentiment that shimmery watercolor that we filled it in. Then we have that thin gold outline because we did the heat embarrassing on our impression. And then the background has that kind of tone on tone texture that just adds interest without being distracting. So lots of different die cutting techniques here and different ways to stretch your supplies. Let's quickly finish off our bonus card and this uses that leftover watercolor die cut piece. This doesn't have any impression with the die but I just thought I'd include it anyway. For the note card itself instead of impressing with a die I'm using an embarrassing folder. This is the new Simon Says Stamp Woven 3D Embossing Folder. This is a good one because the style goes with a variety of card themes. I was considering using this new Rhythmic Waves Embossing Folder with white cardstock. And I decided not to use it but I wanted to show you this because it was fun. This is that embarrassing folder with holographic cardstock. Look how amazing that looks. You could just add a simple sentiment to it and it'd be good to go. Just wanted to show you that because this was something I thought looked really cool when I was trying different options for my card background. I didn't end up going with this one but definitely worth sharing. All right, back to my example. I used that woven embedding folder on the front of our note card. This note card is 5 1 ⁄ 2 inches tall but only 3 3 ⁄ 4 inches wide. That way I could allow the you're in my thoughts sentiment to hang off the edge but it would still fit into a regular A2 envelope. You can see that beautiful woven texture on the background and then we have our leftover watercolor that we smoothed onto that scrap piece and die cut for the shadow of our sentiment. I did add some silver glitter die cut hearts just for a bit of sparkle but this was a quick card to do using my extra pieces. So there you have it what I think is the most impressive way to use a die So we have a few card examples here along with those two bonus cards at the beginning and the end and I hope they leave you feeling inspired to really stretch your dies and use them in different ways. If you're interested in the supplies that I featured today they are linked below my YouTube description but keep in mind these techniques can be done with a variety of dies out there. At the end here I'll link to a couple of the other videos that are related to the technique that I mentioned today and I have even more linked in my description below. I thank you for spending this time with me have a wonderful Dictionary and we'll see you soon.