Tutorial Part 2 - Altering Nestabilities Shapes

As promised, here is Part 2 of my tutorial. If you missed Part 1, you can check it out here. Also, I thought it might be important to know that I use the Big Shot. I've never used the Cuttlebug or Wizard machines, so I don't know if you can see what you're doing as well as with the Big Shot.

How to make a shape longer:
1) Line the die up with the edge of your cardstock and make 2 marks on the paper with a pencil as a guide - you cannot cut all the way to the end of the die. When you see these marks going into the machine, you know you have to stop cutting soon and reverse the direction you're cranking so the cardstock and die come back out the same way they went in [hope this makes sense]. The most important thing is that you DON'T feed in the end with all the excess paper first. If you do, you'll cut off all that excess paper and this technique won't work. [Of course making the marks isn't necessary, I just find it easier to see exactly where to stop cutting.]

After making the marks, place the die under the cardstock, cutting edge up, and run through machine, being careful not to cut all the way. It should look like this when it comes out of the machine:

And then it will look like this when you tear off most of the excess cardstock:

2) (This step is pretty difficult to see.) Re-align so that only a little bit of the previously cut piece is in the end of the die. For the scalloped dies, I tend to put about 2-3 scallops back into the die. You need to give yourself enough room to stop cutting so that you don't cut off the end you just made.

This is what it looks like with the cutting edge up:

And cutting edge down (it's best to use some removable tape to keep everything from shifting):

3) Now run through your machine, and just like the first cut, make sure you DON'T put the end with the excess cardstock through first. Crank the machine until it almost reaches the end of the die, but then stop and reverse so that the cardstock/die come back out the same way they went in. You should be able to see through the clear cutting plate if you've cut far enough.

It will look like this when you take it out of the machine:

And when you remove the excess cardstock:

And compared to the size of the die:


As for making the shape fatter, it's a lot more difficult. Because you have to feed the cardstock/die into the machine a certain way, it's impossible using the above method to make this longest die fatter (you would have to feed it in sideways and it's too long to fit through that way). BUT, you can do it with any die that will fit into your machine sideways. The longest scalloped die in the Small set will fit through sideways, but since you can only feed it in so far before you have to stop, you can't make the shape much fatter. Here's what I ended up with:


BUT.... at Lilian's request, I actually have figured out a way (just now!) how to double (or even triple or more) the width of the longest scalloped rectangle!! It's a lot more work, but you're not limited at all in the size diecut you can make!

Since this post is already really long and I have to do up the new tutorial, please join me tomorrow for Part 3!