Cutting up with cats

These are small cats by Impression Obsession, so I really like how the dies are all attached in a  compact strip. The photo below shows the actual die in gray. It's 4 inches by 1.75 inches. That photo also shows the variety of colors I cut them from.  Now I have a little box of kitties. 

Surprisingly, the most realistic cats came from the paper shown in the photo above, the paper that the package is sitting on. It's a large floral in tan and cream, but in the tiny cats, the darker lines show up as random variations in the cat's color.

 

In this photo, the cat on the top right, with his tail up, was cut from that tan paper. Going clockwise from him is a brown patterned one, a solid black, solid white, polka dot and finally a brown, wait for it ... calico! The solid cats are handy because you can turn them over to face the other way. 

Here's a closer look at the patterned cats.  

And the box of cats:

I wanted them for the audience in a card I'm making for my brother. (Not glued down yet.) The image is a B.Kliban cartoon that was a poster when we were teenagers. I don't know if he owned it or just showed it to me in the store. The cat is singing in a club, and I liked to quote the lyrics, which I thought were so funny. The song goes: "Love to eat them mousies; mousies what I love to eat. Bite they little heads off; nibble on they tiny feet."  When I saw it as a rubber stamp, I had to have it! I'll never admit what I paid. Even though it's small, it's the most I've ever spent on a stamp. 

And finally, my cat:

Homemade mounting foam

Something that came in the mail was packed in this wonderful foam. You can cut strips and apply double-sided tape on them, stick them to the card stock you want to levitate, then apply more double stick tape to the other side to secure to your card base. In the top photo is a roll of foam I saved from a package. You can see a strip I cut from it and a roll of double-sided ATG tape.

Here is a blue panel raised from its white card base with homemade mounting foam:

In the wedding card below, the outer blue frame was raised using homemade mounting foam so the central aperture would be more dramatic. Whatever I save on supplies, I spend on Sue Wilson dies.

Inspiration: Lots of pots

You've heard the story about the pottery-making class.

It may have been a study on creativity.

Half the class was told to make the best pots they could and submit one for judging.

The other half was told to make 50 pots each and select the best for judging.

The winning pots always came from the 50-pot group.

Try things. Notice what happens. If you like it, do some more in a slightly different way.  If a flub leads to another thought, try that. Discard the duds or cut them up and make a mosaic. If somebody says, "I wonder what would happen if ...," stop everything and listen. Especially if that somebody is you.

Confession 1

Buying in bulk and on sale and from eBay and with a coupon are all great, but it's not like making cards has saved me any money. I can rejoice in the per-card savings of buying card stock by the ream, but I have hundreds of stamps, dies, inks, embossing folders and other supplies I've never used. If you add up everything I've spent and divide by the number of cards I've sent or given away, the per-card price comes to about $6,000.

Stamps, dies, embossing folders and punches don't get used up no matter how often you use them, and some might be valuable someday to future collectors. Buying those is like going to a movie or to bars or the casino or watching cable. It's my leisure activity. And my addiction. It's cheaper than cigarettes, alcohol or drugs, and at the end I have something to show for it. 

But the supplies that get used up, like paper, adhesives, cutting plates and embellishments, those have to be economical. Do you cut your pop dots in half? Use the stuff between the pop dots as pop dots? Make your own pop dots from, say, certain types of packing foam and trimmings from unmounted rubber? Me too. 

Crumbs is what my friend Betsy calls the scraps of paper leftover from cutting out a shape. Those crumbs of paper can be used for cutting or punching smaller shapes. The leftover strips from cutting 12 x 12 sheets to the desired size are still good for punching small labels or edges or when you need leaves or petals. I'm even thinking of harvesting the confetti that is a byproduct of intricate dies by shaking down the trash bag beside my Cuttlebug and then cutting a hole in the bottom and shaking some more. 

I buy rolls of double-sided ATG mounting tape by the box of 12, and even then I only tape the corners and maybe a spot in the middle, not All around all four sides. I don't see how people keep buying those tiny applicators of sticky tape. Although I do like the ones that apply teensy double-stick dots. Betsy showed me how those work on intricate cut-outs so you don't have to use spray adhesive or rubber cement, both bad for breathing. I enjoy breathing. 

Ideas in the photo

-- Use a twist tie to mark the leading edge of your clear packing tape.

-- Use clear packing tape on the smooth, non-cutting, side of your die to keep multiple die parts spaced the way you want them. Very handy when cutting multiple snowflakes or flowers from the same set. You can place and remove them all together and you're less likely to lose one. Remove the tape when you put them away so it doesn't age into a sticky mess.

-- Use wax paper between an intricate die and the paper you're cutting so the paper releases easily.

-- Cut cheap flexible kitchen cutting mats into sizes that fit in your die-cutting machine, and use them to extend the life of your cutting plates. They also make excellent shims.

-- Buy card stock by the ream. Avon Brilliant White is wonderful. If you don't need a whole ream, split it with friends. If you have lots of friends, you can get an even better price by the case. Go to a store that supplies paper and envelopes to businesses like printers. For a set-up charge, like $5 or $8, they'll cut the ream into halves, which, when folded in half, are the exact size for standard 4.25 x 5.5-inch cards. While you're there, get a box of matching envelopes. Compare the cost per card to what they charge for small packages of card and envelopes at the craft stores.

-- When you buy books of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper on sale for half price, as soon as you get them home, tear out one sheet of each design and cut the sheets into 4 x 5.25-inch panels that will fit onto your basic white card with a nice white border around the edges. You can get 6 panels from each sheet. Keep the panels in a box. To make a quick card, choose a panel, add something on top or punch something out and bam, there's your card. The easiest card to make is to punch a heart from the panel, affix the panel, then use pop dots to raise the punched-out heart over the white space.

Here's one my friend Pat made and sent to me as a birthday card. I thought she had found a fabulous new technique for making backgrounds. It's just a piece of scrapbook paper, and she added some die-cut petals and butterfly and stamped happy birthday. Actually she also added a plain panel behind the scrapbook paper panel.

-- A good investment is a Carl paper cutter that locks and holds your stack of paper and has a magnetic bar so you can align multiple stacks quickly to cut the exact size again and again. Cuts about 10 sheets of card stock at once. Saves so much time and trouble.

CREDITS: That fabulous die in the first photo and the Happy Birthday die cut are by Sue Wilson of Creative Expressions.