Life must be filled up

This post will be meaningless to most of the people who look at my blog; also to experienced card makers.

I fell for these Edge’ables and what could be done with them, so I ordered the Reindeer Dance. Online, I found the Create & Craft TV programme which was flogging these and skipped until I found and felt I’d mastered the instructions. Imagine my disappointment when at my first attempt I found that my Cuttlebug simply would not cut the centre of the die. I tried various different sandwiches, all in vain. Then I found that the die cut much better if it were placed in the machine vertically. Problem: the Cuttlebug won’t take even a six inch card sideways. So I hunted through my stash and found this small card, 15cm deep when opened out.



According to instructions, I lined up the points at each end of the die with the card fold. I used Washi tape to hold it in position. As the die is so detailed, I also used greaseproof paper between the die and the card. I ran it through twice and then embossed it as well. Getting the card out of the die was still a fiddle, but it worked! I had an offcut of the same card, which I stuck inside to hide the cut-out shape. Sorry about the photo: this is now looking inside towards the front.



This wouldn’t be necessary with a large card but with such a small one, I needed more space for a message inside. Standing up, the card now looked like this (I just put a piece of red card behind so that the design would show up.)



Now it needs decorating.

The only way I can use this die is to make titchy cards or use it as a regular die, cutting off the edge which hasn’t been cut. That rather defeats the purpose of having the die in the first place. So I’m very disappointed and would only recommend the dies if you have a large die cutting machine. I’d be interested to hear from anyone else who’s found the same problem.

Edit: I've recently found that Joanna Sheen, on her site, says that edgeable dies work best in big machines. if only all sellers were as honest!