Partial Die-Cutting Holiday Cards

Good morning, Jess here!  It’s great to be back to posting but I’ve really enjoyed seeing the debut from the new design team girls!  Have you seen the posts by Eunji, Vera, and Emily?  Keeway is coming up next week! 🙂

Today I’m sharing two cards using the partial die-cutting technique!  The basic idea is that you only run part of your die through your die-cutting machine so that it only cuts partway.  There are a lot of variations on this technique but here are two ways of using partial die-cutting!

For my first card I used post-it tape to line up a shape die and the panda die on my panel.  I marked a line near the bottom with my pencil where I wanted it to stop cutting through the paper.  Then I just stuck the top part of my panel in between the die-cutting plates and left the bottom portion of my panel (below the line I marked) out of the plates.  When I ran the plates through the die-cutting machine it only die-cut the top of each die.  Then I removed the dies and used a craft knife to carefully cut across my pencil line so that I could remove the outline around the panda from Panda Can’t Even.  I stamped the sentiment from Crystal Flurries underneath the panda and heat-embossed it with silver powder.

Then I just created a shaker card and filled it with lots of sparkly beads and sequins.  I wanted a little more interest on the back panel of my shaker so I stamped a few snowflakes from Crystal Flurries and heat-embossed them with holographic embossing powder.  It wasn’t intentional but I like how it looks a little like a snow globe! 🙂

My second card focuses on the gorgeous layering snowflakes from Crystal Flurries!  I used the same technique but die-cut several layers of cardstock and snowflake dies.  For the blue layer I heat-embossed the snowflakes with silver pearl embossing powder.  On the white layer I heat-embossed the snowflakes with silver embossing powder and on the vellum layer I heat-embossed the snowflakes with white pigment ink and holographic embossing powder!

I stamped the sentiment from Holiday Lyrics in blue pigment ink and heat-embossed it with clear powder.  I adhered all the layers together, trimmed them down to a 4×5.25″ panel and mounted them on a white card base.  Finally I added a few silver metallic sequins for a little extra sparkle!

And those are my cards!  Make sure you join us on Monday for a mini-release! 😉 Have a fabulous Thursday and thanks for stopping by!

-Jess