Ten Seconds Studio Molds - Cuttlebug

In my previous post, I showed that Ten Seconds Studio molds could be used with the Big Shot to emboss not only metal, but also chipboard and card stock. Now it's time to see if they're compatible with the Cuttlebug, and if so, with what combo of Cuttlebug accessories.


To keep things simple, I chose the Big Daddy (green) mold and a couple of the Skinny Minis (blue pair). There are also some A2 size pieces of 36 Ga craft aluminum, fairly heavy chipboard, and Georgia Pacific card stock pictured above.


Due to the thickness of the double-sided Big Daddy mold, I thought I would start by simply going with the sandwich that I'd use for Cuttlebug embossing folders, but eliminate one of the B plates: A plate, mold, chipboard, silicone rubber, B plate. Well, that was too thick. Gee, and it had seemed so reasonable at the time.


I had to take out the A plate. It was making things too thick. I replaced it with the C plate and both B plates, then followed that with the mold, chipboard, silicone rubber, then my crease pad that had been previously cut to size to fit through the Cuttlebug machine. I didn't have spare B plates handy or I would have tried one. At any rate, this wound up being too thin, and a B plate would probably have been too thin, too.


At this point, it would have been reasonable to try shimming with the Cuttlebug backing pieces that I keep handy, and I did insert one between my B plates, but I also replaced the crease pad with my black Sizzix Impressions pad which is a bit heftier than the crease pad. If you don't have one of these, try a spare B plate or a crease pad and start gradually adding shims.


Here's the embossing using the above sandwich. It's not a sharp, crisp image and really can't be expected to be due to the thickness of the chipboard.


Here's how the debossed side looks. Here you can see that the stack did put enough pressure on the mold to make a good impression. Using a lighter weight chipboard should look even better, but I wanted to put this to a good test with heavier stuff.


I used that same stack here, but substituted the craft aluminum for the chipboard. I just love the look of that embossed metal!


For card stock I figured that I'd need some shims. Here's my stack from the bottom up: C plate, B plate, two Cuttlebug backing shims, B plate, mold, card stock, silicone rubber, Sizzix Impressions pad.


Stormy here today. I wasn't shooting pics in good light. That card stock really should look white. I think you can still appreciate the embossing though. Mist the card stock before embossing and it'll look even better.


This blurry photo just shows the relative thickness of some of the plates and pads. The crease pad and B plate are very close to the same thickness, the Impressions pad is slightly thicker than each of those, and the C plate is clearly much thicker than the Impressions pad. That's just to help give you an idea of what you might want to try when you're experimenting. Please, please, please remember though--don't try to force any stack or sandwich through your machine. It's normal to feel the rollers apply pressure as you roll a sandwich through, but it should feed easily once started. And do keep in mind that machines will vary and a sandwich may need to be tweaked a bit to work in any particular machine.


As for the Skinny Minis, these are single sided molds and therefore thinner. I pulled out the A plate again, stacked the mold, card stock, silicone rubber, and then C plate on top.


Here is the result of rolling that stack through. Again, as with the Big Shot, it works better if the die is put through the machine lengthwise. I didn't use metal this time around, but I expect that the same stack would work nicely for that.

For the sake of completeness, I should add that the Kabuka molds are double-sided like the Big Daddy molds, so that same sandwich should work. To emboss the full length you'll have to run it through twice, once from each end since they're longer than Cuttlebug plates. They're only 4 5/8" wide though, so they fit through the opening of the machine with plenty of room to spare.

So Cuttlebuggers, these Ten Seconds Studio molds can work for you, too. Metal embossing looks awesome, but you can emboss card stock as well. Love that versatility!

Ten Second Studio molds & Big Shot

Gotta love versatility! This post has to do with Ten Second Studio molds. These are dense plastic molds sort of similar to plastic texture plates but with a lot more heft and more deeply etched designs. They're like texture plates on steroids! These were designed with metal-working in mind, and the Ten Seconds Studio site has a wonderful gallery and great videos for using these molds with metals in very creative and gorgeous ways.

But of course, versatility is the name of the game around here, and I was asked the other day by Alicia if I knew if these could be adapted for use with card stocks and/or paper. Now that I have these in hand, I can answer the question. The simple answer is, yes. If that's all you wanted to know, you can stop reading here, and thanks for stopping by. :-) If you want to see my test runs with these molds using my Big Shot, then read on.

These are some of the molds that I'd ordered by happenstance not too long before I'd received Alicia's note. That's a Making Memories paper trimmer, so the lines denote 1/2" intervals, just to give you an idea of the size of each type of mold. They have several sizes--up above you see the Big Daddy and Kabuka, which are both double-sided, the border mold (hollow on the back, so I need to play with this one before I say more), and the Skinny Minis (there are actually two molds side by side in the packaging). The Big Mama molds aren't pictured here, but they're slightly smaller than the Big Daddy molds and single-sided--at least that's what I gathered from watching the Ten Seconds Studio videos.

The materials that I chose to play with are 36 Ga soft craft aluminum, card stock by Georgia Pacific, and some chipboard--heavier than cereal box weight, more like the back of a sturdy legal pad.

This is the Big Daddy mold. As you can see, it's very thick. I sandwiched it between two of the small embossing folders by QuicKutz in the photo, just for the sake of comparison. You might also be able to make out that it's a two sided mold--that is, it has designs on both sides.

If you watched the July '08 video on the Ten Second Studios site, you saw that they used two Wizard charm plates to emboss using the Big Shot. For those of us who don't have those plates and who aren't even sure what we have that could compare, I've experimented and come up with stacks using more traditional Big Shot accessories.


Because the mold is so thick, I eliminated one of the clear cutting plates right off and I also used the multipurpose platform on No Tabs. Here you see from the bottom up, or left to right in the photo, the multipurpose platform with No Tabs, Big Daddy mold, chipboard, black silicone rubber, and one clear cutting plate. It was a tight squeeze with a fair amount of resistance, but it did roll through. (I should add here that I've now viewed a more recent video on their site and hooray (and go figure), they used a similar combo to what I used here, but they used the black impressions pad instead of the clear cutting plate.)

This is a good time to reiterate that it's never a good idea to force anything through your machine because you'll risk damage to it or to your accessories. Also, all machines are not created equal--my stack may be too thick for your particular machine, or it may roll through more easily. Just depends, okay? So do take care if you're experimenting.


Here is the chipboard after it was run through. This is a heavier piece of chipboard, so the embossed design is not going to be sharp and crisp due to the thickness of the material.


This is the view of that same piece of chipboard from behind. This probably gives you a better idea of just how deeply etched these molds are; it's a very nicely debossed design.


And I had to try these with metal. This is the real reason that I'd wanted some of these. I used the same stack as before, figuring that it was a tight fit and that the pressure would probably still be more than adequate for embossing a much thinner sheet of metal.


Here's how that turned out. It's so pretty!


Now it was time to try it with card stock. I misted it with some Paper Glide first (water would also be fine), then I used the stack described above. The design looked great, but the card stock had cracked in a few places. Not a surprise since I heard it cracking as I rolled it through.


So, I decided that I needed a thinner stack. I was already using No Tabs, so I set the multipurpose platform aside and replaced it with four clear cutting pads, then the mold, the card stock, the black silicone rubber, and my blue crease pad (I didn't have any more cutting plates handy.) rounded out the rest of the stack.


The design was not quite as crisp, but the card stock didn't crack either. I didn't do it this time around, but I could have tried running it through again with a card stock shim or a Cuttlebug backing shim to see if I could get a more crisp design without cracks. You could also try the black impressions pad instead of the crease pad and see if that adds enough thickness to the stack without causing tearing or cracking.


I did want to try something fun because of the double-sided-ness of the molds. I used three clear cutting plates, then a sheet of black silicone rubber, a piece of card stock, the mold, another piece of card stock, another sheet of silicone rubber, then the black impressions pad (You could substitute a clear cutting plate with some shims if you don't have the impressions pad.) Can you tell where I'm going with this?


And here is how that experiment turned out. I successfully embossed two pieces of card stock with both designs of a double-sided mold in one pass. Too fun!


This is the side of the Big Daddy mold that you hadn't seen until now. Cool, eh?

Okay. Now the Skinny Minis are not only smaller, but they're also one-sided, so they're thinner than the Big Daddy molds.


I pulled out the multipurpose platform again. This time I opened it to Tab 1 and stacked the mold, card stock, black silicone sheet, and then clear cutting plate on top.


I found that it was best to run the mold through the machine lengthwise to get the most even impression.


This is the result using the 36 Ga aluminum again. I'd changed my stack to: multipurpose platform on Tab 1, mold, aluminum, silicone rubber, black impression pad.


This is the same stack that I just described, but this time I ran it through with chipboard instead of metal.


Since it was tough to appreciate the embossing in the previous photo, I accented it a bit with some ink for this one. I thought that the fairly detailed mold did a nice job of embossing a fairly heavy chipboard.

My main use for these molds will still probably be embossing sheets of craft metal for fun embellishments, but it's good to know that they can also be used with chipboard and with card stock to use for embossed or debossed designs layered on cards or on scrapbook pages.

For Cuttlebug users, I'll test and post sandwich combos for these molds and the Cuttlebug machine at a later date, maybe next week. Got lots of stuff going on this week. All good stuff though. :-)