...welcome to the party!!

Good morning and welcome to the party! Usually at this time of the month we are having a release, but this month we're doing something a little different!! We are celebrating!!

What are we celebrating? Well, we are celebrating our good fortune, we got something rather special for Christmas, we were blown away to receive Spellbinder Grand Calibur machines!!

If you have visited me before you might know that I am ADD.IC.TED to Spellbinders die templates. All of them. I dare not admit in public how many of these things I actually possess...and if you tell my DH I will strenuously deny mentioning it...just kidding, he regularly packs them away for me after I have a craft explosion.

Right before I get on with the card deets let me tell you what's at the party for you! Opportunities to win free stuff!

The Party will last from today (Friday) until Sunday. 3 days.

• Folks who purchase anything during the 3-day event (8.00am this morning 21st Jan to midnight Sun 23rd - all my time) will be entered into a draw. One person will be randomly picked at the end of the 3 days to receive their shopping basket free!

• We will also draw one random winner per day from comments left on one of the DT blogs just like we do for regular releases (only there will be three days of winners rather than just one!). Each winner will receive a free stamp set of their choice!

• We will also be holding a special challenge after the party. At the end of the event, we will invite all you folks to CASE a card/project from the 3 days. You will have one week to link your entries to the WMS blog post and then we'll pick a random winner for a prize. You may enter as many times as you like. One random winner will receive a set of Grand Nestabilities Dies - Grand Labels 4 and a set of stamps of their choice!

DT ladies at the party with us today are:

Mona and Carly

 

Don't forget to leave the ladies a comment for a chance to win!

Grand Calibur - the low down!!


Soon as this was released I wanted it. I wanted it so bad. Turns out I have a fairy god-sister, because my wish was granted!!! I could not believe my eyes when this baby landed at the doorstep!

I have a purple wizard which I have always loved, and nothing on the planet embossed like my little purple dude, but the truth must be told, I live in a tiny house, and the crank was a little bit noisy for dead-of-night craft sessions. I also have a cuttlebug, and it's fine, the embossing is nowhere near the wizard, but it is quiet.

Then came the Grand Calibur. This machine is the answer to my current problems. I have found that the embossing is a lot crisper than my cuttlebuddy. And the Calibur is quiet. ahhh. The side handle features a generous grip, which I found very comfortable to operate. There is a suction plate on the bottom that actually sucks. And at last I am no longer rowing the wee cuttle across the table...lol!!

AND can you see the plates? They have the names printed on them. This thing is pretty fool-proof. Cutting and embossing sandwiches can be mixed up easily and the simple action of having the names printed on them is genius.

Huge tan embossing mat. Fab.

Living in a small house, I was a little worried that the Calibur would be a monster, but here you can see it beside my wee green thingy. It's actually not that much bigger, which makes the difference in cutting capacity so much more striking. Also there are no wings to fold out, just a little white 'tray' piece at the front which only needs to extend out about 2 inches at most. It's quite neat really, I was surprised by that.


The cutting capacity is huge. Here I have laid out two full sets of label die templates on the one cutting plate so that you can get an idea of how much you can cut all in one go.

I found that the Calibur cut all of these cleanly in one pass.


The opening on the Calibur is wide. UK ladies will be interested to note that A4 sheets can fit easily in the opening with no need to trim.

I tried a piece of standard US cardstock through the opening and had to crinkle the edge up slightly to feed it through the tray, I didn't mind this as i was interested in the die cut shapes and the edge was going to be scrap. If I was making a project using US cardstock, and I wanted the edges of the paper to be smooth, I can simply remove the white tray, 8.5 inch paper will then feed through no problem

There are a couple of methods for doing this and here is a link to a video showing how.


For today's card tho' I didn't even get as far as die cutting! lol, I used the tan embossing mat and a couple of little paper doilies to make a simple embossing on a piece of plain cardstock. You know how when you buy doilies there are sometimes 3 or 4 sort of stuck in a layer together? well, I didn't separate mine. I just laid them on the base plate. Put a piece of cardstock over the top and layered on the tan mat and the pink embossing plate, and ran it through.


I wanted to show you that even something as fine as a few paper doilies can generate a lovely embossed image to use on a card. I picked out the embossed detail with a little sponged distress ink. I dressed my image very simply with a button, a piece of ribbon and a couple of rows of faux stitching, done with a gray pencil. The sentiment is from Say It with Style, which, incidentally, was our first Spellbinder compatible stamp set, released in August 2009!!!


Later on, I had a go embossing whatever I found to hand - here I ran some pieces of tinsel through the Calibur and got a rather interesting rope effect, I hope to use this on a card tomorrow! I love experimenting!



Hope it tickles!