Craft Puncher and Die Cuts

I bought this corner puncher yesterday from Memories, 1 Utama at RM34.80. Corner puncher makes a great different to our craft. I've been thinking of getting one for a long time as RM30+ for a puncher seems to be expensive. I used to cut the corner myself using scissors. However, the effect is very different. You cant get a round, smooth, balance corner.

Can you see the different between the 2 cards above? The card on the left is without corner punch, wheres I've punched the 4 corners of the right card with the corner puncher.

I bought this Sizzix Sidekick die cut starter kit (at RM225, after 10% member discount) in Apr 08. It came with 2 die cuts ie a flower and "Happy Birthday" embossed plate. I chose this Sizzix die cutting machine as it also work with other brands ie Cuttlebug dies.

Check out Sizzix website http://www.sizzix.com/ to find out more about die cut machines, ideas on die cuts, etc.

Jared loves to play with this machine. I gave him some papers and let him explored with it.

Together with the starter kit, I bought this Yarn alphabets dies at RM220.50. It came with both the uppercase and lower case. Prior to this, I've been buying lots of alphabets cards for journaling. At the end of the day, I used up lots of the vowels alphabets but not the others. So, these dies are good solution to it.

I loved this Cuttlebug Zoo Animals dies (RM88) and bought it cause I'll be making lots of cards for Jared and friends' kids.

Look at these cards. Aren't they lovely? Using die cuts do take up lots of time and effort, however, I just love the 3D effect of it. It is also so versatile. I can mix and match with lots of paper colour and pattern.

And this was the other stamps that I bought on the same day at RM86.40 after the 10% member discount.

And finally, this is the Frog and Lily Pad rubber stamp that I bought. It is a woodblock set of 14 cute frog and fun message stamps, including a thought balloon.

I realised I have lots of dies and rubber stamps on animals. At that moment, I had the idea of making "Animal" cards, tag, etc for Jared and kids.

Jared and I worked on the above cards. I let him stamp the animals on papers and colour them.

After trying both dies and rubber stamps, there are pros and cons of both. For dies, we need to choose a few colour papers and work with the die cut machine, match them and glue them on papers. The effect is excellent.

As for rubber stamps, after stamping on papers, we need to colour the stamp and scissor cut the design. However, the effect is not as good as using die cut.

Scrapbook and cardmaking are an expensive hobby. Many times, I'll try to stay away from the shops but somehow, I ended up in the shops for a few hours and spent money that I thought its too much to spent on stamps and papers, promised myself that I'll not spend anymore on it and at the end, buying more things that I believe is the last thing to buy.

But look at the results! Aren't they cute?