WOYWW 111

20/07/2011 by UKMA 24 Comments

Well, yesterday I got sidetracked from what I WAS working on (a card) by the arrival of the replacement die from DOCraft. So the card is still on my desk in bits:

The whole sad saga of the die that would not release the letters can be seen here. Anyway, as soon as I opened the package I looked at the depth of the foam and I KNEW the replacement was no better than the original. And it wasn’t. The letters were still wedged inside the die, tighter than a drum, and teasing them out with a pokey tool left them in a heck of a state.

BUT, I had a few suggestions from various people – first I tried Julia’s suggestion, via a comment on that post, to add a layer of tissue between the die and the paper – not much help, I’m sorry to say. And I tried cutting multiple layers of paper, as a few had suggested, but that just seemed to wedge the paper more deeply into the die.

So I thought, I don’t have any wax paper (another suggestions via UKScrappers) but maybe freezer paper, with the plastic coating would work – my thought was if the freezer paper got stuck inside the die part (Plastic coated side up) then the cut letters would slide off it. No. The freezer paper just fell out

So I thought what if I cut some foam? Maybe the foam would stay inside the die part? Or maybe if I cut the foam AND the paper at the same time it would work. It didn’t, but I did get perfectly cut, easy to remove foam Thicker-like letters. So adorable! Almost salvaged the die with that ability, even if I couldn’t use it for paper, which is why I bought it.

But then I saw some of my fun foam was sticky backed. And that was the ticket! I peeled off the backing sheet, stuck the sticky side of the foam to the existing foam and ran it thru the machine. ALL of it stuck down into the letters. THEN I cut, as normal, the cardstock.

OMG The letters almost fell out of the die!! Some of the edges are the TINIEST bit ragged (and I mean TINIEST bit) but I think with use they will cut better – the 2nd set is crisper than the first, so maybe as the foam sinks in and compresses it will work better.

Now I had 2 dies to play with, so I thought the unaltered one I would use for cutting foam but then I thought why not give the foam a go with the added-foam die? And guess what? That worked too!
So while I still think the die should have worked perfectly right out of the package, at least now I can make my own foam thickers AND can actually use the die for cardstock. And I have to spare a little praise for the Do Craft customer service person who sent me the replacement (despite it being not their usual policy, which is take it back to the retailer) – it still didn’t work any better, but having the safety net of two allowed me to experiment and arrive at what I think is a workable solution to the product problem.