Shaped cards with Lisa Fish!

My guest today is the fabulous Lisa Fish of A Mermaid's Crafts. Lisa does amazing things with her dies and creates the most gorgeous cards. Her projects are beautifully layered and immaculately detailed with lots of brilliant stamping and use of mediums. Today she shares how she creates her signature Spellbinders base shaped card and is also hosting a challenge with a fantastic prize for one lucky player! :)

But first let's sit back and enjoy some of Lisa's fave creations...

My name is Lisa Fish and I'm so honored to be a guest today on Yvonne's blog. I have loved art all of my life but started seriously crafting about a dozen years ago. I was inspired by all of the crafty shows HGTV and DIY used to air. I first discovered Tim Holtz on an episode of The Carol Duvall Show about ten years ago and my love of all things inky, shabby and grungy was born. I dabbled with several mediums, with polymer clay being my favorite. I still enjoy working with clay when I have the time but most of my focus now is on paper crafts. My style is very eclectic and always changing. I enjoy trying new techniques and different mediums and have recently become obsessed with mixed media projects. I started my blog by making cards, layouts and home decor projects with my Cricut, then I discovered Spellbinders and fell instantly in love. I rarely make a project without using at least one.

My favorite technique is making shaped cards using Spellbinders dies as the base. This technique is pretty simple once you get the hang of it and you can create a variety of unique and beautiful cards.

Step 1
To create the base of the card, fold a piece of paper in half and place it over the die of your choice. I am using a Decorative Labels 8 die. For dies with intricate edges, you may want to use a piece of wax paper between the die and paper so that the paper will release easily. Also, since the paper is doubled over, you may have to run the die through the machine a couple of times to make sure the pieces cut all the way through. Now make sure you move the paper below the top edge of the die so that the fold does not cut. Run the die through your die cutting machine.

It will look like this after you run it through your machine a couple of times. You do not need to emboss it since this layer will be covered up.

Step 2
Remove the paper from the die and punch out any cut pieces. you will have a card with the fold intact, but it doesn't look complete since the top edge has been cut off.

Step 3
Your next step is to cut a single piece of cardstock with the die as you normally would and then emboss it. Now you want to adhere this piece to the base. With intricate dies, I've found that the easiest way is to attach it is to use sticky dot sheets, but you could also use a Xyron or glue.

Step 4
Adhere the top piece to the base to cover the fold. With the cut edge covered you have a unique shaped card base.

I love to layer Spellbinders to create different looks. I used paper from Prima's Nature's Garden stack for this card. On top of the base, I adhered a Labels 8 die cut. The next layer is a Spellbinders Floral Oval die.

Another technique I like to use is to make the card interactive. The Floral Oval die is attached to the base with a brad to reveal a hidden sentiment.

A Fancy Framed Tags 2 die was used for the JustRite sentiment. The butterfly is a Winged Things die, cut twice and popped up with foam tape for dimension. Rock Candy Stickles was added to the top for a subtle sparkle.

Now it's your turn!! I'd love to see your shaped cards using a die cut as the base. It doesn't have to be a Spellbinders die, but I'd love it if it was.

I am giving away one of my favorite Spellbinders dies - Labels 4, as well as a Spellbinders Impressabilities Snowflake template and some Want 2 Scrap Nestabling. I can't wait to see what you create!!

A huge thank you to Yvonne for having me as a guest this month!! I have truly enjoyed it!! Happy crafting :)
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Ready to play along? Please link your newly created shaped cards using a diecut as a base via InLinkz [located at the end of the post] by Friday September 6, 11.55pm (GMT +8).

As always, please leave a little love for my guest Lisa. :)