...Simple Easter tags and Basic Partial die cutting

Evening folks - are you ready for a little Easter Prep? - If you are the type that has all the stuff made already, right down to all the bows tied, well, I'm impressed. I'm a last minute gal, which is kinda annoying, but that's a whole other adventure into psychology and I'm not qualified to lecture on that so let's just say I'd love to be more like you!

'Simple' and 'Easy' are both friends of mine and the older I get, the friendlier we become. The three of us knocked up these tags quite quickly the other night using the new Easter word die and I was very happy with how they turned out. I love how the 'Easter' word sits up a little from the coloured background tag and casts a shadow - you can encourage that by mounting with little foam adhesive pads.

I also used elements from the A Good Egg stamp set and

 Good Egg die set to dress up my tags.

Seriously it does not get much easier. I did a little partial die cutting, been itching to do this with a suitable word die and here it is - the Easter word die.

Basic Partial Die Cutting

I wanted to cut the word out, but leave a little at the bottom attached to the card stock that it was cut from. Here's how I did it:

I taped the die to some cardstock (I'm using yellow card in this example) and lined the bottom of the word die and card right up to and slightly over the cutting plate on my Cuttlebug. You have to sort of eyeball this from both sides. Once I had it in place I taped it to my cutting plate - the pic above shows what this looks like when I have run it through the bug. You can see the words are cut out all around except for a little area at the bottom of the 'E' and the flourish of the 'r'.

Below is what it looks like when you take off the cutting plate.

Once you take off the tape and flip it right side up, it looks like the example blow (I'm using a white card example here)

Next thing to do is take a ruler and a craft knife (- I'm using a clear quilting ruler and a scalpel) and line it up between the two uncut areas of the diecut. This word makes it very easy because most of the middle letters are higher than the 'E' and the 'r'. All you do is cut a straight line between those two letters.

Once you have done that. the word becomes free of the base section and you can use it on your project. In the yellow example below you can see how I'm lining up a stitched tag die over the word to make a further cut.

This is exactly how I made the words for each of these these tags. Have a go! This 'Easter' die is a lovely die for this technique, such a pretty font and I love how the 'E' and the 'r' are just that little bit lower, allowing the middle letters to be cut out fully. Ok, I'm off to go tackle some admin now...have fun!