Category: Craft Dies

  • Delicate Peony | by Jeanne Jachna

    Delicate Peony | by Jeanne Jachna

    Birthday Peony FourIf 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.
    Birthday Peony copy
    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.
    Birthday Peony Step By StepThe first layer is of course the easiest.  Stamp it in your lightest shade of ink.
    Birthday Peony Step OneNext 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.
    Birthday Peony Step By StepFor 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.
    Birthday Peony Step ThreeA 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.
    Birthday Peony SixI 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.
    Birthday Peony FiveThe sentiment is a fun script – very clean and contemporary!
    Birthday Peony Two copy
    Thanks for stopping by!  I hope you’ll join us every Tuesday for more craft inspiration from our design team!
    Jeanne-Signature

  • Sculpted Greeting Cards

    Sculpted Greeting Cards

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    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.

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    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.

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    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.

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    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!

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    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!).

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    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!