Maria Giselle's Creative Cuts: Mirror Die Cutting Technique

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Mirror Die Cutting Technique

Hello! Welcome back to my blog. I had the opportunity to attend an AECP Level 3 Workshop last Saturday. It is my first time to attend one since most of the time the AECP workshops are held on weekends while I am asleep from a night shift and working a night shift again.

The workshop focuses on the mirror die cutting technique in which you use the reverse side of the die cut. Ishani @quill_ish, the instructor, used the Altenew Bird of the Mountain die set for the workshop. I registered late for the workshop so I was not able to purchase this die beforehand.

I used the Altenew Sweet Blossoms layering die set instead. Using the mirror die cutting technique allowed me to expand the bouquet of flowers for the card that I created. When I do mirror die cutting, I use my least used cutting plate so as not to transfer the cut impressions of the plate to the back side of the die cut which will be used as the mirror die cut image. Ishani shared a tip of sandwiching the die cut in a folded printer paper, then run it through again the die cutting machine. Such a clever idea!

Before adhering the flower layers, I added piercing to the floral base layer using the Altenew Dotted Swirls Debossing die just to add a bit of interest to the die cut. I adhered the flower and leaf layers.

I die cut a heart on acetate to use as a base for my floral wreath. I used glue dots to adhere the flowers to the acetate. Once I am happy with the arrangement, I reinforced the glue dots with liquid glue. I set this aside to dry with something heavy on top of it.

I die cut another heart larger than the acetate heart on pink vellum. I attached the floral heart wreath on this. I used a pink gel pen to highlight the dots created by the debossing die. I added shimmer to the stamen of the flowers using Wink of Stella.

For the card panel, I embossed a white cardstock cut at 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" using the Altenew Wicker Texture 3D embossing folder. As taught in the workshop, I added ink to the embossed panel using a brayer. I used the Altenew Morning Frost Fresh dye ink. I added spritz of gray mica spray and drops of pink and teal mica solution. Once this has dried, I adhered the heart wreath on the panel.

For the sentiment, I doubled the pink vellum by adding double adhesive on one vellum piece, then adhered the other piece to it. This just makes the color brighter as you can see when compared to the vellum heart die cut. It also makes the vellum thicker. I die cut the sentiment from the Altenew Trebel Love die set (retired). I adhered this to the panel.