With a little planning, you can maximize your specialty paper using the zero-waste die cutting technique

 What is zero-waste die cutting?

With zero-waste die cutting you use all of the pieces from your die cuts, even the negative space and the "innies." It requires a little planning ahead because you need to think about how you will use both your initial die cut as well as the leftovers.

In this short video I show you a couple tricks I have learned along the way to make this technique a little easier, especially when using intricate dies.

Here are some more examples.

I used the left-overs from this beautiful blue holographic paper

To make this card.  I like this one better!

Is it a red poinsettia, or a poinsettia on red?  Notice how I switched up the greetings.

I used some leaf skeleton dies to cut these leaves from a master board and some green and brown cardstock.  I alternated the innies from each as inlays. I love how they turned out!

After cutting the leaves out, I didn't want to toss what was left of my master board, so I backed it with yellow cardstock and used some of the die cuts to stencil in the leaves with green chalk.

I hope this has inspired you to look at your die cuts in a different light!

Box Envelope Tutorial

Watch this tutorial to learn how to use my box envelope calculator at http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/boxenvelope.php to create envelopes for your dimensional cards.

Box Envelopes

Now that you've made a card with five layers and loaded it up with embellishments, you need an envelope to put it in.  So, you measure the card, measure the thickness, get out your paper cutter and scoring tool and set to work only to find that you miscalculated and the envelope is too small.  Sound familiar?  If not, move along, nothing to see here, but if it does, try out my Box Envelope Measurement Calculator.  Just enter the dimensions of your card and it does the math for you.  It will tell you what size paper you need and where to put the score lines.  You can find it here:
http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/boxenvelope.php

Folding instructions for the simple envelope with attached flap:

Here's a diagram for the simple envelope.  The dotted lines represent score lines.  Cut on the red lines.

It should look similar to this when you're done cutting.

Valley fold all remaining score lines.  Use a bone folder or creasing tool for crisp folds.
Use a corner rounder to round the corners if desired.
Add white liner (double sided tape) to the left and right sides of the inside of the bottom flap.
Glue the tabs to the bottom of the envelope as shown.

Fold the side flaps in.

Fold the bottom flap up adhering it to the side flaps.

All done.  Now you have the perfect sized envelope for your card.


The Folding instructions are the same for the envelope with the separate large flap except that you will need to glue the top flap to the envelope before folding.