Yesterday I needed to make 40 kits for this little candy topper for a Make-It project. Luckily, my friend Barbara was willing to loan me her Frosty Fun stamp and die, but the idea of stamping and die-cutting 40 snowmen was still a bit daunting, especially since I was having a pretty hard time lining up the die with the stamped image and keeping it in place while running it through my Journey Grand.
Then I remembered a YouTube video I had seen about using a stamp positioner to stamp AFTER cutting, and decided to try it with the home-made positioner my husband made for me.
First I cut the snowman shape out of a scrap piece of card stock and put it into one of the corners to act as a placement template for the blank die-cut pieces. The red showing through is a sheet of fun foam that cushions the metal back of the positioner, and the card stock is held in place by magnets.
Next, I placed the stamp right into the cut opening so it fit perfectly, and closed the acrylic door of the positioner so the stamp stuck to the door and would stamp in the same place every time the door was closed.
Here's my first try. Every now and then part of the image didn't stamp perfectly, so I just re-opened the door, made sure the die-cut shape was still in the template's opening, re-inked the stamp, and stamped again.
And here are a few of the finished snowmen. I was able to use my card stock much more efficiently by cutting blanks, and this was MUCH faster and easier than stamping, then placing and cutting, then doing it over and over again. This is a technique I'll definitely use again, especially with images that are a little difficult to line up in the cutting die.
