ACCORDION FEATURE FOR CARD

TIE WITH A RIBBON

I really like little accordion books, and there's no reason you can't adapt them for cards as well.  This little book ties closed and features Darkroom Door stamps, but the format is handy if you're making a card that lots of people want to sign - just make the book a bit bigger if they want to add their "best wishes" as well.
Just an aside....the feather is a Couture Creations die that I've chopped up a bit to make a bit more "feathery" and I've tied two together with wire - white card on the bottom and  velum on top. I've added just a teeny spray of water to the vellum to make it curl slightly - again, it just gives a little more body to the die cut.

ACCORDION FEATURE FOR CARD

DIE CUT WITH FABRIC

DIE CUT WITH FABRIc

Thin cotton fabric stuck to thick packaging card with double sided Jac paper, then die-cut looks good, and is an alternative to paper or paint/ink.

If you cut with the fabric face down on the die, the edges bend over slightly and you can get away without having to ink the sides.

You might have to experiment to find out which of your dies are up to the task as the ones designed for thin paper won't have enough cutting power.  I haven't tried a doiley die, but suspect the more intricate cutters wouldn't work very well either.  This is a thick Sizzix die, but I expect most of the nesting dies and the old silver Cuttlebug ones would work too.
As long as the stack you use is not too thick for your machine, it won't hurt to experiment!

DISTRESS INK EMBOSSING

DISTRESS INK EMBOSSING

I was going to put this little example in the bin about three times but something stopped me.

It was created by swooshing a few different colours of distress ink, straight from the cubes onto the plastic surface of an embossing folder,( whilst talking to a room full of people, although that bit is optional)  then running it through the Cuttlebug.

Distress inks are very watery . (They are supposed to be), this means that they tend to bead on plastic and smoosh together more than a lot of other inks, when this technique is used.

I kind of like the random nature of the result.  If I was doing it again with a bit more thought I'd choose colours closer on the colour wheel (perhaps yellow-orange-red) and maybe even add a little spray of water to encourage the inks to spread a little bit more.

There's a l lot of potential to play here and, for those who stress about such things, the ink came straight off the embossing folder with a baby wipe!!

EMBOSSING WITH ALUMINIUM FOIL

ALFOIL EMBOSSING

This is a simple technique that just involves wrapping some stiff cardboard (I used packaging) with a two or three layers of aluminium cooking foil, and embossing with your Cuttlebug (or whatever machine you have).

I just secured the foil with a bit of tape at the back but some double-sided Jac would be a more stable way to fix it.

This was a quick snap taken under a fluorescent light but I'm quite taken with the photographic applications of a really shiny embossed surface, as well as its obvious craft uses.  (If you look closely there's a little bit of me in this shot!).

Colour could be added in a variety of ways.....perhaps for future posts????