Christmas Candles

Our Craft group met for the last session of the year, with Jane leading us through a project. A battery candle was to sit on a little box, then be covered with a tall pyramid of vellum, decorated with Memory Box diecut snowflake trees. We chose our colours and off we went. It was a lot of fun to make, topping off with little stars, glittering to be done at home.

Christmas tree lights

The crafting was followed by chatting and eating. Some of us had our Christmas cards ready to give out, and nameless ones didn't... LOL. There's nothing worse than making a card for a crafter - they pore over it and minutely dissect how it's been made!

We're Walking in the Air

My sequin ball globe map made it onto the metal Christmas tree this year, so it was time for some new white ribbon with "We're Walking in the Air" lettering.

The supermarket threw up a surprise product - a giant stick of Candy Cane rock - made in my favourite holiday spot, Scarborough on the North Yorkshire coast!

Hand-made in Scarborough

Catch up with you again soon I hope.

3 Die-Cutting Machines

Ooh, it's here! It was delivered today - how fast was that from Card Craft UK
Now to check where not to cut! - and get my tree die back from Jane to try.

Big Shot

As you know, the tree die was left to Jane's tender ministrations.
She emailed me and said,

Alice. Your tree die cut like a dream on the big shot.

I used one shim about 200grm and ran it through twice, turning the die on the 2nd run through. Then tried the die again just putting it through the machine once with the shim and it cut out no problem. Just needed a wee bit more wiggling to get the bits out.

I just might be investing in this die now.

So guess what? Yup, I've ordered a Big Shot machine, because I would like to buy more of these lovely Memory Box dies.

Getting Shirty at the Craft Group

I have had had more help from Dave of Memory Box and he sent this useful link to his video.  This gave me more ideas about how to get the tree to cut out all over, not just in the centre, by using a metal plate - but this didn't work either.

Adding the centre patch just took away the pressure from the outer leaves, so that's been removed. At the craft group Jane tried it on Ann's Cuttlebug with no success.  She's taken the die home to try in the Big Shot. So... back to the craft night. I had bought a set of three rubber stamps for male cards. Ann suggested I size down this shirt and tie to fit the 2" square punch used for the Waterfall card and do it for my project.  I sized and centred it in MS Publisher and printed out lots of little squares for the girls.

These were coloured with alcohol pens and distress-inked at the edges, then attached to the mechanism. A background was made by using a Versamark ink pad then chalking over that, or brushing with mica powders, or heat embossing.

I coloured four more shirts for future use but the finished product of my sample is blue of course!

Dave's video:

Cutting Edge Comments

Well, thank you Annie, MaryNSC, Rita, Little-ladys Crafts, Debbie for all your commenting suggestions in response to my request for help with using Memory Box dies.

I also received a reply from the manufacturer.

Hi Alice – I do have a little trick with this die that you might try. The center of the tree is pretty detailed, so it sometimes needs a spot shim, depending on how tight your machine is. Rather than using an entire piece of paper to shim, add several layers of tape (masking tape, scotch tape, etc.) to the back of the die, right in the middle. This will increase the pressure in just the right spot, allowing the middle to cut out better. You can leave the tape on the back of the die for future use.

Does this help?

let me know!
dave

Memory Box, Inc.

I have tried all these suggestions, rejigged my sandwich according to the googled video and still have not got the leaves cut out, though the tree is improved.

Now what?

A cut above the rest?

My die-cutting machine is a first generation Spellbinders Wizard, which works better now that I have the new plates. I later bought a first generation Cuttlebug because it is so simple for the embossing folders.

I have a fair collection of Spellbinder, Sizzix, X-Cut and Go Kreate dies too

At the last Craft Fair I bought a Memory Box die of a lovely tree, but, oh dear, I am having little success with it despite using thinner and ever thinner card with shims and hurting my wrist into the bargain!

I store my stencils and some dies in this A6 photo album

The Craft Group has been set a Challenge to make a tone-on-tone card, using only one colour throughout. I have used the tree and the frame dies in various tones of green, so we will see it how it eventually turns out.

The previous Challenge was to make a digital-program-only card, and you saw the stepper card I made on a previous post.  I have added more ruby tweaks to transform it into an anniversary card for hubby.