So, I’ve also been playing with a Cuttlebug for the past week. It’s a cute little embosser and die-cutter – again, designed for paper crafting, but I fed a bunch of other things into it instead.
Above is a wallet I made by laminating fabric to duct tape and then embossing them. You would think that, in the fifty or so prototypes it took to get this to work, I’d have taken a photo of the machine. But I didn’t! So here’s a manufacturer’s photo:
It’s super easy and fun to use. The embossing area is about the size of a standard greeting card, though, so you have to get creative with your hacks.
My yellow duct tape was a little translucent, so I laminated it to some apple-green fabric to create contrast. That’s transparent duct tape at the edges – my new favorite thing!
Here you can see the fabric interior. I had to starch the fabric heavily to help it hold the emboss. The starch prevents the duct tape from sticking initially, but when you put fabric and duct through the Cuttlebug, they bond beautifully.
If y’all are interested, I’ll be glad to make a tutorial after Maker Faire.
Now here’s an idea that really intrigues me – this is what the fabric side looks like after embossing. Cool, huh? And it really holds the emboss nicely. But – there’s that size limit again!
What would you do with this, using pieces no more than 6″ wide? Let’s crowdsource!
A couple other things I’ve run out of time to explore: the Cuttlebug does a dandy job embossing metal. This is a piece of tooling foil, and I got similar results with layered kitchen aluminum foil.
Even more intriguingly, you can emboss Friendly Felt! Imagine adding some embroidery to this, or a little seed beading, or maybe some fabric paint. I have a stack of FF sheets awaiting my return…
…And by the way, playing cards also emboss nicely. Here I colored the raised design with a Sharpie.
ACK! I leave for Maker Faire tomorrow! I hope to see you at the Provo Craft booth this weekend!
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