Butterfly Brilliance and Dies: to cut or not to cut?

If you’ve noticed the new Butterfly Brilliance stamp set and Brilliant Wings dies, one of the first things you might be surprised to find is that the stamps and dies are all in one piece.  Should you try to cut them up, or keep them as a whole unit?  Let’s think about the pros and cons:

Keep stamps together: can stamp large backgrounds very easily, and can stamp many butterflies at once to be colored later.

Cut stamps apart: Can choose and use the stamps individually (obviously), easier to handle.

If you are hesitant about cutting the stamps apart but want to stamp and cut only particular butterflies, especially in duplicates, you can try using the following Negative Space frame method and your Stamparatus. This also works well any time you are stamping and die cutting multiples of one image for singular stamps and dies, like for a mass of Christmas cards, etc.

Directions:

1.  Cut a 4 7/8” x 6 ¼” piece of heavier cardstock with the Brilliant Wings dies. (This size will fit in the die envelope to be saved for later use.) Remove butterflies.

2. Place the Negative Space frame in the Stamparatus and wiggle the stamp into the cut-out shapes so that it is aligned. Close and open the clear door to attach the stamp. (Note I added a piece of scrap paper below the frame in step 4 when I realized that extra ink might extend into the next shape and be messy.) 

3.      Place a precut blank into the desired shape.  I’ve chosen the upper left corner butterfly here (pictured above).

4.    Ink desired image and stamp as usual (upper right picture).  Using a Mini Stampin’ Spot is neater, but regular size ink pads are faster although ink may extend to areas beyond your chosen image. Just be sure to have the scrap paper in your Stamparatus to keep it neat.

5.   Repeat steps 3 and 4 for as many pieces as desired. The beauty of this method is that it’s also easier and faster to die cut many blanks first and stamp them repeatedly in the Stamparatus rather than stamping first and then having to align and cut each image individually.  Save any Negative Space frames in the die envelope for repeated use.

6.    Color your butterfly: use an Aqua Painter (waterbrush) to easily spread the colored ink used in stamping, or stamp in black ink and color with markers or Stampin’ Blends to match the DSP or as desired. 

While the above method works very well, personally I’ll eventually cut up the butterfly stamps to be used individually, and know I can arrange them in the Stamparatus if I want a background format.

If you want to cut up the steel dies, you’ll need to use metal shears, an electric Dremel tool, or something that will not leave a sharp edge. Before I cut them up though, I’ll be sure to die cut ALL of the butterflies from the matching DSP first, as they are already perfectly aligned in mass now.

You may have noticed that the Many Messages stamp and die are also offered as a huge background stamp and die (pictured right).  The idea here is that you can make masses of words ahead of time and save for later use.  But the same Negative Space frame method would work if you only wanted a few duplicates of selected words. You could also cut the stamp into smaller pieces to use on a clear block or in the Stampartus either as individual stamps or smaller groups of stamps. I think that would make the words more easily useable, but it's your preference as it depends on your needs and preferred usage.   

Hope this all helps, let me know if you have any questions.