TGIF – I *Heart* Diecutting with Angelica

Happy Friday! If you haven’t already, this weekend is the perfect time to wrap up your Valentine crafting! Angelica is here with some fun and quick ideas for creating some simple cards using just diecuts paired with some sentiments. Perfect for those last-minute Valentines!

I was putting away product the other day in my craft room, and came across Shapely Hearts Die set. I seriously hadn’t touched this die set in almost two years! So I pulled the set out, and picked Hot Stuff Sentiments stamp set to use as my sentiments.

When I’m working with dies, I like to die-cut a lot of whatever die I’m using, and I LOVE to make backgrounds with the die cuts. So with these hearts, I spent about an hour die-cutting colored card stock and white card stock. I made several styles of backgrounds, using the hearts in different ways.

With the colored cardstock hearts, I made a background of hearts on pink card stock. I also made a frame of hearts, using black hearts under the colored cardstock hearts for depth and shadows. I love how black cardstock can really brighten cards up. 

Another idea for using dies is die-cutting a panel several times, repositioning the dies after each run through the die-cut machine. That’s what I did with an inked panel. I used oxide inks to ink-blend a background, then used the two smaller hearts to die-cut the panel. It took maybe 5 minutes to die-cut the panel. Once finished, I had a panel that looked like I die-cut it with a cover plate, and I also had beautiful inked hearts. I was able to make two cards out of the inked panel, and I finished the cards with two more sentiments

Slimline cards are also a great way to let your die cuts shine. I made a simple arrangement of hearts that I inked with Distress Oxide inks. I used glue to attach the bottom hearts, and foam squares to attach the top hearts. I finished with one last Hot Stuff Sentiment.

These are just a few ways I like to use dies. As much as I love coloring and painting, my first love is paper. And die-cutting is my absolute favorite. 

I hope I was able to pass along a few ideas on how to put your dies to work. That’s all that I have for today. Thanks so much for stopping by!