DIY creative Cuttling and an aside on folder making

Ever since I wrote about the different things that could be used to emboss selectively with the Cuttlebug embossing folders--I'm talking about creative Cuttling--I haven't been able to stop looking for new items to use. Now I did say that the shapes had to be fairly simple. This technique doesn't pick up a lot of detail. Here's a card that I made earlier.


I used the Cuttlebug Script embossing folder and Cuttled it using chipboard with a heart shape cut out of it. Okay, technically it was three layers of chipboard that I glued together after cutting out the heart shape from each. This was a scalloped Nestabilities heart die by Spellbinders. I wasn't looking for the scallops to show up. I wanted the heart shape. The bird image is by Pink Paislee and stamped with Memento dye inks. The sentiment is by Inkadinkado, also stamped with Memento ink.

This is a photo of one of my test runs with the heart cutout, using the Textile texture folder and the creative Cuttling that I've described before.


Then it occurred to me that I could use not only this cutout, but the die cuts as well. Almost a year ago, I posted here about making my own embossing folder out of chipboard, using letters that I'd cut out using Sizzix alphabars. It was simple, but it worked.

This time I made my folder using the heavy weight transparency that I'd used when modifying those small Cuttlebug folders. I used my cutout side as the 'negative' face of my die and the die cut as the 'positive'. I adhered the chipboard pieces to their respective sides of the folder using my ATG. Just a word of warning, ATG tape is very sticky, but with chipboard and transparency it's even less forgiving than usual! You can guess how I might know. ;-)

Here's how it works as an embossing folder.


I had to play around with the shimming, and again, you'll want to take care and start thin and gradually add shims until you get an impression that you're happy with. This gave me a very crisp design right off.


That's just another photo with the folder open so that you can see the two sides and how they come together to sandwich the card front. The hinge is at the top of the folder.

Another good thing about this set up is that I can still use the cutout side of the folder for creative Cuttling like I did at the beginning of this post. I just open the folder all the way and lay that 'negative' face on top of my Cuttlebug embossing folder and run it through the die machine. The positive side either runs through ahead or behind my 'sandwich', off the platform entirely. And now that I think about it, you could the 'positive' face similarly to emboss, in this case, a heart shape of your Cuttlebug folder design.

Now it may not be a big deal to be able to emboss a Nestabilities shape since you can emboss those just fine on their own, but imagine if you'd used a Sizzix thick cut die or some other die that isn't made to be embossed like those alphabet dies that I'd used last year. That's where this could come in handy, particularly if you don't own an electronic die cutter and have to do things the semi-old-fashioned way. :-)