MFT July Release Tips & Tricks

Hello and welcome to Tips & Tricks for July! With today’s card I’m going to show you how to cut wagon wheels accurately every time. I found this particular stamp and die can be a little tricky to match up—so I figured out a way to get around that. I’m going to share it with you and I made this card to showcase my perfectly cut wagon wheels.




So, let’s get right to it. In the photo below, you’ll see my first attempt on the right. Yikes, right? Subsequent attempts to get it right the “normal” way were not much better so I started thinking about how to do it better. The result is the one on the left. MUCH better, wouldn’t you say?




Maybe nobody else is having the problems I did and I say, “Good for you!”. But if you’re in my boat, here’s what I did. I’m using the second smallest die from Circle STAX Set 2, but any open circle die that’s a  little larger than the wagon wheel die would work--I figure most people have a circle die of some sort. I stamped the image and positioned the die on top of it, as well centered as I could get it by eyeballing it.





Then I drew around it with a pencil and made some marks inside each spoke opening. The outside needs to line up but so do the spokes—these marks help with that as you’ll see in the next photo. They need to be as centered as you can get them; these were also eyeballed—I tried with a ruler but that was harder to get centered since mine is not clear. A clear ruler would probably be great for this.




Next I placed the wagon wheel Die-namics on top of my image as evenly spaced inside my pencil circle as possible. All of the marks inside the spokes need to be lined up with those openings, too. I think you can see them in this photo.




Then tape it down so it won’t move and run it through your die-cutting machine. Here’s my second wheel, nicely cut. Any stray pencil marks can simply be erased.




And there you go—easy peasy and ready to color and use on a project. For this card I wanted the wheels because I wanted to tie the balloons to one as it was propped against the Farm Fence Die-namics. I sponged the sky with Berrylicious dye ink, the ground with Latte die ink, and the grass was stenciled with the new Grassy Edges Stencil and Sour Apple dye ink. Images were stamped on No-Line Coloring card stock with Extreme Black Hybrid ink and colored with Copic markers. I added some Puffy Clouds Die-namics and foam tape was used to create dimension.



And that’s it from me today! I hope my tips & tricks will save you some frustration if you’re having problems cutting your wagon wheels. I’d love to hear from you if you use it and it helps.

Thanks for stopping by! See you soon!

All products from My Favorite Things unless otherwise noted.

Stamps: BB Saddle Up & Celebrate
Die-namics: BB Saddle Up & Celebrate, Farm Fence, Puffy Clouds, Circle STAX Set 2
Stencils: Grassy Edges
Dye Ink: Sour Apple, Latte, Berrylicious
Hybrid Ink: Extreme Black
MFT Card Stock: Sweet Tooth, Kraft, No Line Coloring
Supplies: foam mounting tape, E-Z Runner, Multi Medium Matte Glue
Tools: Smart Grid Paper Pad, Mini MISTI, Mini MISTI Grid Paper Pad, MISTI Bar Magnets, Square Bone Folder, Scor-Buddy, QuickStik Pick-up Tool, Precision Tip Glue Applicator Bottle, Copics, Sakura White Gelly Roll Pen,  craft tweezers, plastic eraser, Mini Ink Blending Tool, sponge daubers
Other: Die-cutting machine, paper cutter