Dies for CD Sundays

The current challenge at CD Sundays is Dies - the funny thing is, although I have very often added die cut shapes to the cards I have put into previous CD Sunday challenges, when I sat down and actually THOUGHT about combining die cutting and CDs, my mind went totally blank.

Then I thought about how I'd been meaning for ages to try using a die to create a custom-shaped aperture  in a card, and inspiration struck.

Fist of all I made a tri-fold card from a sheet of A4. I decorated the two opening panels and the inside central panel with butterfly papers printed from the Crafter's Companion "Love" CD, which has been sitting neglected in my collection since I used it for making my daughter's wedding invitations seven years ago, layered on purple card. I usually only apply adhesive to the edges of the card and paper when layering, but for the panel that was going to be cut I made sure it was applied evenly all over so the edges wouldn't come apart after cutting.

Then on the left hand panel, I created the aperture using the largest die from one of the Spellbinders "Labels" sets (I can never remember which number goes with which label). It needs to be positioned carefully and held in place  with masking tape. And being so thick, it needs to be passed through the die cutting machine several times. I found that this made the masking tape stick to the card front a little when I removed the die. However the sticky residue came away easily when rubbed with one of the "sticky  dot remover" erasers that used to come with packs of sticky dots when QVC used to  sell them.

To give the aperture definition, I inked the edge with purple ink using a piece of cut and dry foam. I turned the piece that had been cut out over and inked the edges of the white side of it, then used a butterflies and flowers embossing folder to emboss it. Then I stuck it to the right hand panel, closing the card and applying it through the aperture to make sure it was perfectly aligned.

Finally I used more purple card to die-cut a butterfly, decorated it with pearls and stuck it down at the edges over the aperture.