Die cutting CD’s!

As I was about to toss that CD that came in some junk mail, an idea struck. What if I tried to die cut it with my Sizzix? Hmmm. Would it just crack or would it work? Guess what? It worked! After I tried this cut I realized that the Moxie Fab World blog is having an innovative die cut challenge. What a perfect entry for this challenge! I am very excited about this technique. The CD adds a really fun shine, iridescence and thick texture to a project. Check it…

Notice all the color reflecting off the butterfly? So awesome. Here is another view. Notice that even when the CD isn’t iridescent, it is still very shiny, like glass.

I do have a few tips for you if you want to try this yourself. First, only steel-ruled dies will work. You will not be able to use wafer thin dies. You need the strong, chunky blades for cutting this thick material. You’ll need to roll the die through the machine slowly to prevent the material from cracking. I only have a manual machine so I don’t know how an electric one would work. And the biggest tip about working with CD’s is that you have a rather small usable area on the CD. As you’ll notice in the photo below part of the inner text ring of the CD was cut out by my butterfly die. It didn’t bother me. I added a bit of black ink around the whole butterfly to help incorporate the “mistake” a little better. You’ll need to use a fairly small die if you want to avoid the inner ring of the CD, like I did with the flowers. I did use a pair of craft scissors to trim the CD down to a size that better fit through the die cutting machine. I cut the CD slowly with the scissors, again to avoid the material cracking. Finally, the CD material did stick in the flower die when I pulled it out of the machine. I just used a pair of needle nosed pliers to gently pry the material out.

Recipe
cardstock, sentiment stamp: Stampin’ Up
steel ruled dies: Stampin Up (butterfly), Tim Holtz (tattered flowers)
ink: Ranger (distress), Tsukineko (StazOn for butterfly edges)
tissue tape: Tim Holtz
gems: Want 2 Scrap
foam dots: Therm-O-Web
other: junk mail CD!

I hope you find this technique as exciting as I did.