Stretching your Dies with Negative and Positive Die Cutting

Hi Friends! Emily Mydlowski here with you today. I love stretching my cardmaking supplies and today I’m sharing a fun way to create two layered rainbow cards using positive and negative die cuts. If you missed out on the free with purchase You are Awesome Stamp Set and Mini Rainbow Die…you’re in luck because it’s part of the April Essentials By Ellen Release that will be available on Friday, April 30th at 9AM PDT. 

Negative & Positive Stretching

• Mini Rainbow Die: I started by die-cutting the Mini Rainbow die to the top of a white cardstock panel leaving a rainbow negative outline as the main layer of the Hey Friend Rainbow card. The positive rainbow pieces will be colored and used on my second It’s All Good Rainbow card. 
• Essential Cloud Dies: I die-cut three Essential Clouds to another A2 white cardstock panel to create three negative clouds that will be used as my main card layer. The frame die cut pieces will be used on the Hey Friend Card and the Cloud positive pieces on the It’s All Good Rainbow card. 

Card Assembly Movements: Hey Friend

To create the colorful rainbow stripes, I used blending brushes to add pink, orange, green and blue ink to the white die-cut rainbow arcs and stamped the You Are Awesome Sentiment to the green rainbow arc. I placed the rainbow pieces in between the clouds and secured them to the back of the card panel with clear tape. For a soft cloud-like effect, I attached a piece of pearlescent vellum to the back of the card panel. I added the cloud frames slightly offset with liquid adhesive and added in the cutest little stars embellishments to the clouds and rainbow beams. To finish the card, I added the HEY Friend sentiment from the EBE It’s All Good Stamp Set and adhered the decorated panel to an Aqua Cardbase. It’s like a sweet little lullaby on a card 🙂

Card Assembly Movements: It’s All Good

I placed an ebony card panel to my MISTI and used the rainbow negative die cut card panel as my template to add the polka dot stamp from You are Awesome Stamp Set to the middle rainbow arc. I removed the “template” and prepared the Ebony card panel for heat embossing with anti-static powder. Using my MISTI, I stamped the polka dot pattern with VersaMark Ink to the Ebony card base and heat embossed with WOW! Gold Rich Pale Embossing Powder then I attached the rainbow negative outline card panel with liquid adhesive to the heat embossed card base. I layered the Essential Cloud Die cuts to the bottom of the rainbow with foam and liquid adhesive. For extra pop and sparkle, I added stamped & gold embossed stars, mini gold stars embellishments to the center of the rainbow and cute little iridescent star embellishments to the edges of the clouds. For the final step, I added the It’s All Good Sentiment with Memento Tuxedo Black Ink. 

So there we are friends, a fun way to stretch your dies to expand your card making to create two different designs using both positive and negative die cuts. Be sure to stay tuned all week long for more April Essentials By Ellen New Release Inspiration and Sneak Peeks.

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