All the rage at the moment.
Wood Veneer cards with words using individual letters cut out.
I am never tempted to buy something I am fairly certain I can make myself.... or at least not until I have given it a red hot go and epically failed, only then will I concede to making a purchase, and only if it is a must have.
Such is the case with these cards.
I have Sticky Barc wood veneer sheets (I also have them instore here), I have alpha dies (I have some Lawn Fawn alpha dies expected instore soon) and I have a love of a DIY Challenge and a healthy stock of money saving genes!
Sticky Barc is an amazing product. A4 sheets of the thinnest slices of wood veneer with the added bonus of being self adhesive, pretty high up in the win win stakes I think. I can get at least 5 Project Life style cards of varying sizes from one A4 sheet.
Here is the official consumer description by the Australian Stockist:
X-Press It Sticky Barc are self adhesive wood sheets cut ultra thin from real wood. They can be stamped, painted, stained, varnished, inked - pretty much anything you can do with regular paper, you can do with Sticky Barc wood sheets!
- 280 micron thick
- 12 sheets per pack
- Inkjet printer compatible
- Can be die cut, embossed, foil stamped or laser cut
Please note this is a natural product and therefore the colour and grain will vary from sheet to sheet and batch to batch.
Enough info and technical jargon.
Here is the how to:
Cut the A4 sheet of Sticky Barc to required card size ie 3x4; 4x3; 3x3 etc
Decide on the word you wish to die cut.
Gather those letter dies and place them cutting side down but in legible order on the Sticky Barc card, secure them with Washi Tape so that they don't move as you load into your die cutting machine (I have a Big Shot)
Where a letter is required multiple times eg T A S M A N I A where A is required 3 times cut all that you can but leave space for that letter
My experience taught me that if I were to cut say the word C H E E S E or L O O K or any word with a letter/s required multiple times but in succession then I would only cut the letters preceeding, cut the multiples and then finish off the word. In the case of C H E E S E, I would cut C H E only on the first pass, move the E across or down then add the S, then lastly the final E = 3 different cut passes. I would not cut C H E leave a space then the S, the reason being it's quite tricky to get the spacing correct and kept straight.
The easiest and quickest words to cut by far are those without multiple/repeated letters.
A full stop can be created with a hole punch or crop-a-dile.
Being self adhesive I can either leave as is and have whatever cardstock/paper is in this pocket on the next page show or I can adhere to cardstock or clear acetate depending on what look I am going for or where this appears in my album. I can easily have different colours of cardstock and/or patterned paper showing through by cutting cardstock/paper to the size of the letter and utilise the self adhesive feature.
Sidenote: any 'bits' you see in the above letter spaces after diecutting are just the backing sheet protecting the adhesive and not the Sticky barc or dies not cutting cleanly.
All of the above cutting and die cutting took less that 30 minutes, a $3 sheet of Sticky barc and one set of alphabet dies certainly saved me a bunch...
and I decide which words I cut!
and I decide the size of the card!
Cheers,
Michelle x