Bright & Beautiful Partial-Die Cutting

The Stamping with Friends Group that I’m a member of highlights a technique once a month. Today’s theme is the Partial Die-cutting Technique. I’m using product from the Bright & Beautiful Suite. Be sure to hop along to the other blogs listed at the bottom of this post to see even more ideas with this technique!

Partial Die Cutting is a really great technique because it allows you to use your dies in different ways — and it’s really simple once you get the hang of it. Basically, you can use any of your dies, and you don’t cut all the way through on one portion to allow for a different look.

My Partial Die Cutting project uses the set of 3 balloons die from the Beautiful Balloons Bundle — the bundle in the Bright & Beautiful Suite. Here’s a closer look at the die:

And here’s my card:

I’m realizing the photo doesn’t do it justice, but the triple balloon is continuous with the white card base and only a portion of it is cut out. Here’s how I did that. First, get a white card base and place your die where you want it on the front. My card base measures 8 1/2 x 11, and I scored and folded at 5 1/2. I placed the balloons kind of in the middle and affixed using post-it tape.

It’s important to remember with this technique, wherever you do NOT want your cardstock to be cut, you need to make sure you haven’t put the cardstock in a full “sandwich” with your cutting plates. Otherwise, it will die cut as usual. You want to place your top cutting plate just to the edge of where you want the cutting to stop. Here are some photos to help:

Run that “sandwich” through your die cutting machine, and then here’s what you are left with:

Doesn’t look like much, does it? Using my trimmer, I cut a line from the top to the first balloon and from the bottom to the cut curve to remove the right side of the card front:

Voila! That’s all there is to it folks. I added Bright & Beautiful designer series paper to the inside of my card base (the confetti) and to the inside of the card front flap to add some color under the balloons. I stamped the balloons, and added a greeting. Here’s the completed card front:

And here’s the inside of this card:

Note: I added a piece of scrap white on the inside left so there was a place you can write a note for the recipient.

Here is this card with another one that I made this morning as I was getting ready for this post.

Note the 2nd card here — to get my creative juices going I first made the card on the right — I wanted to see what this die looked like not all the way cut out. It’s not really what this technique is, but I like the card so I’m including it for a 2nd idea! Here’s a closer look:

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week featuring this suite of products. Again, keep clicking through the others in this blog hop to get even more ideas!

Happy Stamping! Kelly

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