Cover Plate Impressions...
March 07, 2014
Some of my favorite Papertrey products are their Cover Plate dies. I just love how they can turn a piece of cardstock into a work of art with one quick pass through my diecutting machine. Besides cutting with these dies, you can also use them to impress…it’s like having a die and impression plate all rolled into one. I’ve done this many times and I always seem to get questions about it, so I decided to put together a post for you today all about using your Cover Plates as Impression Plates. I’ll also show you some ideas for mixing in different techniques to incorporate color and pattern into your impressed design.
Using the Cover Plate die to create an impression is super easy to do. I get asket most often what sandwich is needed to do this. If you're familiar with the Impression Plates, also sold by Papertrey, the sandwich is the same. The trick is including the embossing mats so that the die will impress instead of cut.
I use a Big Shot along with the Multi-Purpose platform and my sandwich is this (would be the same for the Vagabond w/ a multi-purpose platform):
1. Multi-purpose platform with all of the shims flipped out
2. Cutting plate
3. Cover Plate die (cutting side up)
4. Cardstock
5. Embossing mats (tan and vanilla)
6. Cutting plate
I asked the other DT gals for input on the machines they use and it looks like with the Cuttlebug your sandwich would be:
1. A plate
2. B plate
3. Cover plate die (cutting side up)
4. Cardstock
5. Embossing mats (tan and vanilla)
6. B plate
Your sandwich may vary, depending on which machine you are using and the "tightness" of your machine, but basically it's the same sandwich you would use with any of the Impression Plates. Just remember to never force a sandwich...back out and adjust if it feels too tight.
So now that we have that down, there are lots of things that can be done with the design once it's impressed into the cardstock. You can leave it as is, just as a nice textured background, or you can add in some different techniques to add color and pattern. Here are a few ideas...
For my first card, I used the Cover Plate: Hexagon and rubbed some ink over the impressed design using my ink blending tool. It's a great way to bring out the texture.
After I was finished inking I pulled out the Happy Hexagons stamp set that coordinates and stamped a few of the hexagons. The sentiment is from Inside & Out: Love and was heat embossed with gold embossing powder.
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For my next card I used the Cover Plate: Triangles die. After I impressed the design I used the die to cut a mask out of plain copy paper. I placed the mask over my impressed panel and used a small foam-tip brush to ink some color onto a few of the triangles.
For a trendy look I also used the Cover Plate: Triangles die to cut some gold foil from the Make It Market: Luxe Letterpress kit and adhered those to a few of the impressed triangles. Super easy since it's adhesive backed. I trimmed a few of the triangle tips to create a mini banner for my sentiment block as well (also from the Luxe Letterpress kit).
Since I'm hoarding the gold foil (I love this stuff!) I didn't cut the whole Cover Plate - I just trimmed a strip of the gold foil wide enough to cut one strip of triangles. A little goes a long way!
Here's a quick shot of how I did the inking. Like I said, the mask was cut from plain copy paper -- thinner paper is better when you're creating a mask like this.
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My last card uses a masking technique as well, but this time I did some stamping instead of just inking. I used the Cover Plate: Center Stage die and the Irresistibly Ikat stamp set.
It's fun to see what sort of pattern appears with the masking...when I got done and removed the mask, I thought the ikat almost looked like leopard print! The sentiment here is from the Limitless Layers: Labels set.
Here are a few shots of how I did the stamping/masking. Again, I cut a mask from copy paper using the Cover Plate: Center Stage die. I used some washi tape to tape it down to my work table with the impressed panel underneath, making sure the impressed design and the diecut design of the mask were lined up. The I just stamped the Ikat pattern until the entire panel was covered.
I removed the mask and I had a super fun one-layer pattern.
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