Cuttlebugged ATCs

Since the 50%-off sale on Cuttlebug merchandise was going on at Michaels this week, I got a few new Cuttlebug dies today. My store won't take coupons for any Cuttlebugs or accessories, so I decided I better get a few dies to last me until the next sale ... if there ever is one. Thank goodness I have a little extra personal money coming in this week! :)

I was pleased to get 2 sets of long dies (2 in a pack - Flowers and Floral Borders), a pack of 4 square dies (Vintage), and a spare set of "B" folders (just in case) for $32. That's pretty much all of the Cuttlebug dies and folders that interest me at my local Michaels.

They don't carry any of the embossing folders I like, with the exception of the one I already purchased, so I didn't buy any of those. They had plenty of the small embossing folders that will emboss squares and sayings and designs and such, but I like to emboss backgrounds instead.

I'm actually thinking about going back and getting the CuttleKids dies with the motorcycle, dune buggy and two other vehicles in it. It would be $5 for the four dies. That's reasonable! I passed them up at first because I thought it would be a lot of wrangling with small pieces. But the more I think about it, the more I think I could get a lot of mileage out of those diecuts (no pun intended) on masculine cards. So we'll see if my husband or I ends up in town again this week!

Anyway, I said all that to say this ... I made a few ATCs, just playing around to see what ideas popped into my head and how I might use all of these together. And since Valentine's Day is coming up, I decided to go with the heart theme. Here are the two designs I came up with so far:

For the first one, I embossed the background with my D'vine Swirls folder and "rounded" the edges with a fancy corner rounder. Then, on aluminum foil, I embossed the "Love" stamp die that came with my machine and cut it out with the matching die. I adhered that to the background, then adhered four corners from the Vintage die set to form a frame. At the top and bottom, I adhered leftover pieces from the insides of the corners.

For the second one, I first embossed the Love stamp folder into the base. I embossed the same folder into a piece of aluminum foil and cut out the heart by hand and adhered it to the base. Then I used my D'vine Swirls folder to emboss the rest of the base, one side at a time, then "rounded" the corners. I added four of my Vintage corner diecuts around the "stamp," then adhered a partial cut from the Floral Borders dies to the top.

I liked how they turned out! My favorite way to use ATCs is on cards, so I might try my hand at making them into valentines. We'll see ...