Hi again crafty folk, Ms.rabbit here!

For todays Switched Up Sunday post I shall be showing you an alternative way to use dies. Do you remember June 26th Masculine Make Monday post: In Laid Die Cuts using nested triangle dies? If not here is a reminder…

I hope that this has refreshed your memory, if not you can click back to the original post from the Home page.

This time instead of in-laying the die cuts I shall be embossing with them. To achieve this I left the dies nested and taped together and swapped my acrylic base plate from my die cutting machine, to a soft embossing mat. You can even use a couple of layers of fun foam or even material instead. Just play around until you get the correct ‘sandwich’ depth for your machine and this is what you can achieve:

Embossing with metal nesting dies.

As you can see above, the metal dies are pressed into the cardstock but do not cut through. This is a great way to get another use out of what can sometimes be expensive products to buy.

Now here is the finished card:

I used a thick cardstock – Linen texture, 310gsm, from The Range – this technique. It is important to remember that you may need to adjust your die cutting plates, by adding or removing shims, depending on the thickness of your paper or card. I definitely recommend using a scrap or small piece of your card/paper as a test run, before getting into your actual project. This definitely saves wasted materials, (prevents tears lol), and also prevents frayed tempers!!

Now here is another alternative method of using your embossed panel:

This card happened quite by accident! I had forgotten to remove a shim layer before die embossing a/this tester panel. This resulted in part of the outermost triangle, cutting through the card and the rest being embossed only. I decide to completely cut out the remainder of the outer triangle leaving a die embossed topper! I love it and plan on using this ‘happy accident’ technique again!

Once again folks, I hope that you have enjoyed your visit to my part of the blogosphere!

Take Care and Happy Crafting!!