Valentine - Wednesday Stamper

I decided to do a collage card for this week's Valentine theme on Wednesday Stamper. The stamps are all by Time to Stamp. The coin envelope was distressed with Ranger Distress inks, embossed with a Cuttlebug folder, and then the embossing was accented with chalk ink. The embossed heart and the photo corners are Ellison die cuts.

Two Cuttle Cards

I decluttered my craft table this morning. I sorted through all of the miscellaneous scraps and put them away or tossed them. Some of the keepers I put through my Big Shot first, inside various Cuttlebug embossing folders. I found out that a scrap of polished stone looks very cool when it's embossed. The combination of the texture and the sheen is striking. I also discovered that velveteen paper can have a very neat look. It was time to make some cards with this in mind.

Here are a couple of examples. This first card has a polished stone background that I ran through the Big Shot and embossed using the Cuttlebug textile texture folder. The big flower is an Ellison die cut. The sentiment is one of those smaller Cuttlebug embossing folder sentiments. The patterned cardstock is DCWV Far East.


This second card has white velveteen paper that I embossed using the snowflakes embossing folder. It has a very soft look and feel to it. The silver accent is HVAC foil tape that I embossed using the swirls folder. The sentiment is by Justrite stamps. The snowman was a freebie enclosure/gift from somewhere I'd ordered stuff from this winter. I added the arms--just a piece of a black twist tie.


Yes, I know. I was wishing for spring yesterday. I had to make a concession to winter. We got an inch of snow last night and I have to admit that it looked pretty this morning. It also helps that the sun is out and it's actually warmer today than it has been the past several days. YAY!!!

Die Cutter Recap

It seems like excitement about the Cuttlebug is at a peak! I don't have that machine, but I bought some of the dies and embossing folders when they first came out and I was impressed. I loved a lot of the designs, particularly the A2 size embossing folders. What crisp impressions! They're great! You can use them as is. You can distress them with sand paper or a fine grit sanding block. You can chalk them. Lots of possibilities.

I use the Cuttlebug dies and embossing folders in my Big Shot. They work great and aren't complicated at all to use. I have a multipurpose platform and use them with it the same way that I would use the Sizzix or Ellison embossing folders. The Big Kick is the similar die cut machine that's sold by Sizzix. I think it comes with the multipurpose platform. The multipurpose platform makes life a lot easier! Not only that though, it makes it easy to use all of the following types of dies, both thick and thin:

• Spellbinders Wizard dies
• BossKut dies
• Cuttlebug dies
• Quickutz dies
• Zip-e-mate dies
  
• Sizzix dies
• Ellison dies

Basically, you can use any non-commercial die in this machine. Gotta like that! The thick dies can cut through thicker materials, such as multiple layers of cardstock, chipboard, cork, felt, fun foam, fabric, thin metals.... If the die happens to be one that will also emboss, that works great, too. Now Sizzix, Ellison, and Zip-e-mate have cut 'n' emboss dies that I've used. No problems. Beautiful results in a single pass. Some of the Wizard dies will also emboss. You have to run them through twice though, once to cut and a second time to emboss. These are fabulous!

Now, as for embossing, again you can use all sorts of products in the Big Shot (or Big Kick). Here's a list:

• Cuttlebug embossing folders
• Sizzix Simple Impressions folders
• Ellison Easy Emboss folders and Big Impression texture plates
  
• Quickutz Goosebumpz embossing dies
• Fiskars texture plates--yes, those blue or pink textured plates that were awful to try to use with that little embossing tool
  
• any brass stencil!
  

Again, to make things easy, Ellison released a texture kit to use for embossing with The Big Shot, The Big Impressions Texture Kit. It comes with texture plates (6 designs), a sheet of silicone rubber, and an impression plate. You can emboss cardstock, vellum, lightweight metal, HVAC tape, foil, transparencies.... The list goes on and on. Usually I get a nice impression without much difficulty. One thing to remember is that with cardstock a light misting with water will soften it enough to give a more crisp impression. This can work well both with the texture plates and with brass stencils. Usually the embossing folders have a positive and negative side or image, so those images tend to be crisp already. One more suggestion would be to add a shim if the image still isn't deep enough. Sometimes a sheet of text weight paper is enough. Sometimes you need a sheet or two of cardstock. Just be willing to experiment.

I've tried to make this a little more all-inclusive than my other entries. I know that some of this repeats things I've said from time to time already. I just thought I'd put it all in one spot. I've also tried to update my labels. If you want to see examples of how I've used Cuttlebug folders, you should be able to click on that label and go to that post. Same with some of the other tools that I've mentioned. I'm still fine-tuning though and trying to make things as easy to find as possible. Hopefully I'm getting there. :-)

The Big Shot

I haven't done any stamping this weekend, but I've fielded some questions about the Big Shot by Ellison Design. I love this tool. I had the big Sizzix for years. It was versatile, but heavy and bulky. I didn't use my dies as much as I would have since it was more trouble to get it out and work with it. After I got a Sidekick, I used the thin dies more often. I could emboss with brass stencils, too, but size was a big limitation. A number of other tools came out, but there seemed to be drawbacks for all of them, whether it was the dies that could be used, ease of use (or lack of ease, rather), or price, etc. Then the Big Shot was released.

The Big Shot is a die cutter that rolls the dies through on a wide 6" bed. It's lighter and more portable than the Sizzix, and the cranking action is easy and cuts dies very well. It also embosses brass stencils nicely. Early on, I'd tinker with shims, use adapters and such, and I could use just about any die out there and get great results. Recently Ellison came out with a multipurpose platform. You can picture it as a hinged book. A thick platform is the last "page" of the book. Two thinner pages rest on top of it and allow the user to adjust the thickness to what's needed for embossing or cutting wafer thin dies with or without backing. The instructions are all printed on the platform, by the way. That accessory made it incredibly easy to use any die in this machine. I've used large Ellison thick cut dies, Ellison thin cut dies and cut 'n' emboss dies, Sizzix original dies, Sizzlits, Sizzix alphabars, Quikutz dies, Wizard dies, Bosskut dies, and Zip'e mate dies without any problems. With the bigger dies, thicker materials, such as fabric, chipboard, magnets, and cork can be cut. I get a good cut the first roll through with my dies, too. I should also add that I've tried the new Cuttlebug dies in the Big Shot and they work great!

Now the other thing that these machines can do is emboss. They do the brass stencils in the folders quite nicely. They do the Cuttlebug embossing folders, too. Another recent addition to the Big Shot arsenal was the texture embossing kit. It came with double-sided texture plates, the foam layer and the plastic plate necessary for getting a good impression. These worked wonderfully in the machine, and so did my Fiskars texture plates. My snowflake cards a few posts below show how the Fiskars snowflake embossing plate did in the Big Shot. I think that with some trial and error, the combination of the right shims and right kind of foam could be found, but for me it was much simpler to go with a combo that worked well out of the package.

All in all, I'd have to say that I'm very happy with my Big Shot and with all of the things that it's been touted as being able to do. I've been able to get great results with little tinkering and, best of all, with little frustration! For me, it was worth investing in the texture kit and the multipurpose platform. I'd found work-arounds, but these two purchases have made life a lot easier, and I find that I'm much more likely to use my craft tools if they're easy to get to and easy to use. So that's my take on that. :-)