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How To Make Cards With Foil & Dies

Three greeting cards with foil flowers and dies-cut words on them.

Foil & dies can produce stunning results when making your own cards! Learn how to make cards with products from the new Spellbinders release. It’s called the Sealed by Spellbinders Collection. It is actually a selection of new seal wax products, which are very cool! But, it is also filled with a number of wonderful “sprigs” dies and hot foil plates to go with them.

Don’t have the wax yet? Look what you can do without it!

Foil & Dies Card #1

A foil-stamped card with intricate leaf dies creating a captivating circle motif.
A foil card on a table.

Foiling For Foil & Dies Card #1

To make this pretty card in cool tones, we’ll begin with foiling.

The @Spellbinders Hot Foil Stamp Press Machine is used in conjunction with any of the @Spellbinders Die-cutting Machines. I like to use Platinum 6. And when done correctly the combination produces beautiful foiling. Hint: There is a big sale on the Glimmer Hot Foil System at the time that this article is going live. You can get it for $30 OFF!

For instructions on how to use the Glimmer Hot Foil System, there is a very nice YouTube video from Spellbinders HERE.

We’re foiling the berry wreath with fuchsia foil. And, we are foiling on vellum for our card. That means that we have to be careful because vellum is a little more fragile than cardstock. Hint: The process distorts the vellum so make sure to trim your piece to about 1/4′ larger than the hot foil plate on all four sides.

We’ll take care to remove the hot plate as soon as the timer light goes solid. And then we’ll run it through our die-cutting machine. Once we’ve peeled the excess foil off to reveal our beautiful wreath we’ll fussy cut it out.

Die-cutting

We’ll heat emboss the sentiment onto the darkest teal cardstock with white embossing powder. Once it is cool we will die-cut it with the die that comes with the set. The die is intended to be a tag, but you can easily remove the loop for the string by snipping it off with a pair of fussy-cut scissors.

Next, we’ll cut out the sprigs from the middle-tone teal cardstock. For delicate dies like these, there are two things I like to do. First, I like to add a shim to my sandwich to help make sure that the die cuts all the way through the cardstock. And then, I also lay the dies on their backs to have them cut them up.

Assembly of Foil & Dies Card #1

Attach the Wreath

To assemble the card, we’ll trim the lightest teal panel to 3 5/8″ x 4 7/8″ and then we’ll attach it with a glue runner. And, we want it centered on the card base. Next, we’ll cut out three rings also from the lightest teal cardstock. To demonstrate how this is done, we’ll tape two circle dies together with low tack tape making sure that the “ring” that is created between them is equal all the way around. And then we’ll cut three of the rings from the lightest teal cardstock.

The rings will be used to pop the wreath up. Therefore, we use the same color cardstock for the rings as the card panel so that they will ‘disappear” behind the vellum.

Next, we’ll glue the three rings together with liquid glue. And then, we’ll use Micro Dots to attach the ring to the back of the wreath. Finally, we’ll attach the wreath to the card panel by adding liquid glue to the back side of the rings. Next, we’ll turn them over and fasten them by lightly pressing them.

Attach the Sprigs

Next, we’ll arrange the sprigs. Once we decide where we want them to be we’ll dab a tiny bit of glue to the back and then lightly press them onto the card. You don’t want to use too much glue or it will squirt out all over the front of the card.

Attach the Sentiment

We want to pop up the sentiment to draw the eye to it. I like to use scraps of double-adhesive foam sheets for this, but you could use any foam tape.

That is it, we are finished with the first card.

Supplies for Foil & Dies Card #1

The following list may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something by following a link on this page, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog.

Foil & Dies Card #2

A foil-embossed card with a festive wreath of lights.
A festive card adorned with a wreath design enhanced by dazzling foil accents and intricately cut dies.

For this beautiful second card, we’re not going to use the hot plates for foiling but emboss them instead. To demonstrate this process we’ll place the berry wreath hot plates on the bottom cutting plate for the die-cutting machine. And then, we’ll spray a piece of black watercolor cardstock with water and place it over the hot plates. Finally, we’ll cover the watercolor paper with the other cutting plate and then run the sandwich through the die-cutting machine.

Hint: watercolor paper is fragile and it will rip if pulled on. Therefore, be careful with how you place the two plates of the wreath. Be sure to place them so that the breaks between the two plates are verticle with the length of the plates. That way the machine won’t pull on the paper.

As a result, we have a beautiful embossed wreath on our card.

At this point, it is critical that the card panel dries completely before going on to the next step. When the panel is dry we’ll add a drop of water to each of the colors we’ll use to color the wreath. And then with a round size 0 watercolor brush, we’ll pick up the paint and carefully brush it onto the tiny embossed places on the card panel. And, we’ll take care to clean our brush in water between colors.

While the paint is drying we’ll foil the sentiment that comes with the die set with gold foil. And then we’ll cut it out with the coordinating die.

Card Assembly

To assemble this card, all we need to do is trim the card panel to 3 1/2″ x 4 3/4″ and attach it to the card base using a glue runner. And then we’ll pop up the sentiment with either a double-sided foam sheet or foam tape.

Supplies for Foil & Dies Card #2

The following list may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something by following a link on this page, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog.

Foil & Die Cards 3

A card with black flowers and foil accents on a wood surface.
A beautifully embellished card featuring intricate floral designs created using foil and dies.

I love silhouette cards! I’m just saying…

This is another quick and easy card. We’ll start by creating a background with a stencil that has a relatively small pattern. And, we’re going to lightly blend the colors randomly through the stencil onto a piece of A2 size (4 1/4″ x 5 1/2″ ) cardstock. To do this you just hold the blending brush at the end of the handle and add the color with circular strokes.

Next, we’ll die-cut the blooms from black cardstock. And then we’ll heat emboss the sentiment with black embossing powder on a scrap of light pink cardstock.

To assemble the card, we’ll trim the card panel to 3 3/4′ x 5″. And then, we’ll pop it up with a sheet of double-sided adhesive foam. We’ll arrange our blooms and then use liquid glue to fasten them down.

Next, we’ll fussy cut out the sentiment and pop it up with a scrap of the foam sheet.

Supplies for Foil & Dies Card #3

The following list may contain affiliate links. If you purchase something by following a link on this page, I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for supporting my blog.

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ABOUT AUTHOR
Teri Duncan - Author
Teri Duncan

Teri has over 30 years of experience as a cardmaker.  Her work has appeared in Spellbinders Paper Arts’ blog as well as with some of their products and on Altenew’s blog. Outside of work, she enjoys gardening, stained glass, and teaching. She and her husband live in Crystal River, Florida with their three dogs and a cat.

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