Paper Fanatic: Die cuts with matching stamps...

This Christmas I want to make a lot of cards that use a little stamped Santa image from a rubber stamp I made several years ago (that's a story for another time) but my hands aren't up to cutting out a lot of images (and that is yet another story!) So I stamped my image once, scanned it, and used the software for my electronic die cut machine (the new Silhoutte Cameo...love it!) to create a cut file.

It cuts perfectly and I can cut a dozen of the Santas from a single 8 1/2" x 11" piece of card stock. SO I cut my Santas that I need for my cards, but then I had a problem of getting my stamped image onto the cut out die-cut correctly.

I came up with a solution that works so well that I wanted to share it; not only does it work great for my die-cut machine cut files, but will also work perfectly for those mechanical die/stamp combinations (and I have some of those, too!)

I created a special cut file for my machine that would cut a single Santa in the center of a quarter sheet of card stock. If using a traditional die I would simply have cut the die in the center of a quarter sheet of card stock. I then used the NEGATIVE of the die-cut (the rest of the quarter sheet AFTER my die was cut and removed from it) for my stamping tool, a simple template.

I used my stamp positioning tool and a piece of acrylic to finish my template.

I used the stamp positioner to stamp my Santa on the corner of the acrylic piece.

Next I aligned the image on the acrylic sheet, centered in the hole of the template, right where I would want to stamp the image.

I then used a pen and marked the template where the corner of the acrylic sheet was so I would know where to position my stamp positioning tool later.