Stand-Alone Dies for the Win!

Do you remember a time when Stampin’ Up!® had no die-cutting and embossing machines? If you do, you’ve been around for a long time. For years we’ve had those options and a machine to make it easy. I LOVE being able to cut & emboss using our Stampin’ Cut & Emboss Machine, and the dies we have to use that coordinate with our stamp sets are incredible. When a stamp set has dies that coordinate, there is usually no fussy cutting involved because the dies do all the work. Love that! But do you know what I also love? I love the dies that can be used with no stamps involved…dies that can be used all by themselves. These dies are known as stand-alone dies.

We have lots of stand-alone dies right now, and so often it’s those dies that I pull from the shelf because they’re so versatile. In Wednesday’s What’s Up! Stampers project, I pulled out two such die sets, the Patchwork Pieces Dies and the Wanted to Say Dies.

These die sets are so unique and easy to use to jazz up almost any project, and here’s what I did with them. Note that I pulled in a third die set - Beautiful Balloons. These dies come in a bundle with coordinating stamps, but I just used a couple of the balloons to finish the cute birthday card.

I started by cutting the Patchwork Pieces Dies out of a 3 1/2” x 5” piece of Berry Burst cardstock, giving me a nice Berry Burst frame. I then cut that same die out of four different pieces from the Bright & Beautiful Designer Series Paper to use to fill the Berry Bursts frame back in, mixing and matching different pieces together to make a patchwork quilt look. Because there are 8 pieces that get cut from that particular die and I used four different DSP designs, I could make four cards out of those pieces, using up all the pieces. You can see three of them here.

Next up, I pulled out the Wanted to Say Dies. With several sentiments to choose from in this die set, my options were open. But choosing “Happy Birthday” was a no-brainer with the DSP I had chosen to use. I love how the sentiment dies have a detailed die, along with a layering die. I used Bubble Bath and Berry Burst cardstocks. I think it really pops off the card!

Adding the balloons brought it all together, and a card with no stamps or Basic White cardstock was born. I do love it.

You can watch me put the card together here, and you can see all of the supplies I used to create the card - along with links to my online store - below this blog post.

Happy Stamping!

Amy