Moving and Shaping

Bette guessed right in my previous post. The UPS man delivered my Sizzix Movers and Shapers today. They didn't give these new dies much in the way of airtime on QVC, so I thought I'd take some pics and say a bit about them.


The movers and shapers are compatible with the Big Shot and the Big Kick. You can't use the standard cutting plates with this set of dies. They're just not long enough. In the photo above, you see my Big Shot, the smaller dies that came with my order, the two big clear cutting plates, and underneath it all, the card die. More on the card die below. I just want to point out that these smaller dies are a little different from the traditional Sizzix dies. They're on a wood base rather than plastic and they have the magnets on the bottom to hold them in place on the card die.


The card die is very big and is supposed to cut an A2 size card. A finished card is 5 1/2" long, but actually 4 1/8" wide. The opening that you see there is metal at the bottom--that's where the dies are held nice and tight by the magnets. You just position the die wherever you want to place your "window" on the card front. You can use this big die to make cards in two orientations: one would be the horizontal card with the side fold like the card in my previous post; the other would be a top fold card. In the photo above, you can make out a thin metal strip just above the open part of the card die--that isn't a blade. That scores your card for the fold.



This is the stack that you'd put through the machine. From the bottom up: a long clear plate, the black card die with the smaller window die in place in the opening, the card stock, the other long clear cutting plate.


This is the stack after I've lined everything up and run it through. You can just make out the score line.


And this is the card once I've removed it from the die.

This is an interesting concept for card making. I have to say that it made the window placement very easy, and in the card that I made earlier, I was able to run the flower die through three times to get a different look. I wasn't terribly impressed by the scoring fold. That's a minor issue. That's what my Scor-It is for.

I know that folks with Cuttlebugs will be wondering, so let me say that the card die will fit through the opening of the CB with room to spare. The problem is accommodating the length of the cutting surface of that card die. The long clear plates that came with this won't fit through the opening of the CB. I don't know if you can run this through with the regular CB plates and then run it through again to finish the cut. I'd be willing to try, but this stuff is still too new for me to want to play around quite that much with it yet. Give me time though! LOL!

And for Wizard users, the same issues apply. The card die is just a tad under 6" wide, 5 15/16" to be more precise. I don't have a Wizard, so I wanted to give you the measurements. The cutting surface of the die is 11" long, as you'd guess since it cuts an A2 size card.

It'll be interesting to see where Sizzix will be going with this. I'm sure they'll come out with other smaller dies to use as cut outs. I'd have to think that they'll be coming out with card dies that might be oriented a bit differently, too. But since most of us can cut our cardstock down to size for cards, I think it's the smaller dies and the fact that you can place them fairly precisely that make this concept intriguing. I can use a regular die to cut an opening in a card front, but I don't have one that will cut out a window like the one that came with this set. I think this is a fun addition to the card making arsenal though, and I need to make more time to play with it and see what else I can do with it.