Category: Craft Dies

Warmest Wishes | By Laurie Schmidlin

One of my favorite tricks to cut down on the Holiday rush (and subsequent stress) is to prepare early! I usually start my Christmas cards in September, making several different kinds each month making sure to finish by the end of November. I love that there are so many different Holiday stamp sets and dies in the Birch Press store, making my goal of getting a head start on Holiday crafting so easy!

I wanted to create a card that is both lovely with a layered look as well as easy to mass produce. I started by die cutting the Delfina c Craft Die. You could use this die cut and layer it on your card for a very easy and elegant background. I wanted just a bit more texture on my card, so I used that die cut as a stencil. This is such a great way to get more use out of these wonderful background dies!

I placed the die cut over a piece of light blue cardstock and gently secured the edges with removable tape. Using white texture paste, I filled in all of the negative space. I then gently lifted the die cut up from my cardstock and then set it aside to dry.

For the focal images and sentiment, I used the Brushed Christmas Greetings clear stamp set and coordinating Brushed Christmas Greetings die set. I embossed the sentiment on a strip of vellum. I really love the way the bold, modern script looks in white! To create the foliage, I stamped and die cut the largest sprig twice and the medium sized sprig once. I tucked the stamped and die cut foliage into the top of of the vellum strip. For the final touch, I added a stamped a die cut berry cluster. I think the little pop of red sets off the pastel colors perfectly!

Thanks so much for stopping by! Please join us next Tuesday for some more paper crafting inspiration!

Brushed Christmas Greetings clear stamp set

Brushed Christmas Greetings die set

Delfina C craft die

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September 20, 2016
Delicate Peony | by Jeanne Jachna

If you’re a paper crafter you’re going to love all the latest additions to the craft section of the store. There’s lots of new dies and stamp sets perfect for Holiday crafting! There are a few for every day makes too including this Delicate Peony stamp set with coordinating dies. This is a 3-step image that has lots of depth and dimension.

Making this card is fun and easy. The floral arrangements and colors are up to you, but first let’s look at the stamping. You’ll need three shades of the same color ink. Here’s a step by step reference to make it easy.
The first layer is of course the easiest. Stamp it in your lightest shade of ink.
Next stamp the outline layer in the darkest color ink. For me this was an easier way to define the different areas of the image making the last step (the shading) easier. I used a Stamp-a-ma-jig to help line up the layers.
For the shading detail use your middle shade of ink. Placement of this stamp should be easy using the outline as a reference for stamp placement.
A beautiful bloom right? The dies for the set are all open window dies so they are easy to line up over the image. Just tape the die in place and run it through your die cut machine.
I stamped the bitty flower (also a 3 step image) on a sheet of white card stock several times to create a background for my card. Next I stamped and die cut the flower, leaves and “Happy Birthday” sentiment and adhered them to the card. To add dimension I adhered the flower and leaves with adhesive foam tape.
The sentiment is a fun script – very clean and contemporary!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you’ll join us every Tuesday for more craft inspiration from our design team!

Delicate Peony clear stamp set

Delicate Peony die set

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September 13, 2016
Sculpted Greeting Cards

We’ve been creating innovative craft supplies for over 20 years, so when we decided to create some new craft dies at Birch Press Design, we set out to do something a little different than what is on the market. We created a very intricate look at Memory Box, easily identified in our detailed birds and floral shapes – but at Birch Press we thought we would focus on creating some texture on greeting cards by using layers of shapes.

The result is a large collection of dies that coordinate – circles in graduated sizes, squares that layer beautifully and other shapes that play off of geometric simplicity. We designed these shapes to be used on their own – but also to be stacked.

For a paper artist, the possibilities are endless! You can layer several colored layers together for a colorful look – or if you plan on adding more to the card, you can keep the layers monochromatic, like we did here with some simple, crisp white layers. The design we used was the Circa Set – Layer A, Layer B, and Layer C.

For the Circa set, we designed the circles to “telescope” into the center, slightly offsetting each circle so that when they are layered together, the shapes seem to converge to the center. Sweet!

Adding a simple shape on top completes this pretty look – here we used the Poppystamps Delicate Dogwoods die (#1444) (cut the die out in green, red and yellow cardstock, then layer together and adhere to the front of the card). The look is beautiful – and you can make a dozen of these cards in no time!

Don’t be surprised if you want to run your fingers over the card once assembled – the little reservoirs that are created in the card create touchable texture and the way each contour catches the light is breathtaking.

Who knew you could create such lovely texture with layers of simple white paper? Just add these layers to the front of a white notecard (or any of our colored notecards!).

Wondering if you can still get an interesting look with a single layer! Absolutely!

This is the Circa Layer A by itself – adding some subtle background texture to the Poppystamps butterfly dies (1378 Devyn Butterfly Trio and 1389 Emelia Butterfly Trio). The result is subtle – but still fun and it creates a nice and simple backdrop to the colorful butterflies.

You can purchase the poppystamps dies at a craft store near you or by visiting poppystamps.com – and if you are ever in the Seattle area, we suggest you try one of the cupcakes shown in the pictures from Trophy Cupcakes! You can not go wrong with Salted Caramel or Strawberry Lemonade – yummm!

May 24, 2016