Unused Die Challenge featuring a card by Guest Designer Michele Coffey

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook! It's nearly the weekend again and it should be a hot one here in the UK even though it's a Bank Holiday this Monday (*shock face*).

 One of the things I love about the online crafting community is the ability to make new friends with a common interest and this blog is no exception. Thanks to my crafty nook I've made a very good friend - Michele and we email each other on a regular basis. It is really nice to be able to share things with a crafty pal as my non cyber world doesn't contain many crafty people (there are a few exceptions of course!) so most of my friends don't really get my craft obsession and even my dear husband accuses me of being a craft bore on occasions (but then again he bores me half to death with sports stuff so we're equal  😉). As you may have noticed I have a bit of a crafty obsession with eBay dies at the moment and after going through my stash it sparked a question for Michele - had she ever bought a die and never used it? I have quite a few unopened die sets in my collection but the dies that triggered the question was a set of Chinese Theatre characters which I bought fully knowing I'd probably never use them but wanted because they were so novel (see photo below). The only other time I've been tempted to buy a die set I knew I'd never use was after the USA Presidential Election when a set came out called "Avatar" and turned out not to be characters from the film but profiles of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump - I'm not sure in what circumstance Clinton and Trump dies would be necessary but I wanted them for the novelty factor, if they'd been a bit cheaper they'd probably be in my stash now! It turns out that I wasn't alone so we decided to challenge each other to use an unused die set chosen by the other person.

Chinese Theatre Characters Die Set

We both went through our stash and chose some die sets (I'll freely admit I was too ashamed to share all my unused sets as there were loads of them!) then emailed photos of them to each other. We decided to have a few rules to ensure that the die set remained the main feature of the card. We were allowed to use basic craft supplies (plain card, adhesive, ink for stamping (but not colouring), scissors, die cutting machine etc) and up to five additional items (but as it was our first challenge we wouldn't quibble if we used six) to make the card - for example we could use an additional die set and the set would count as one item regardless of how many dies were in that set, the same applied to colouring mediums (though alcohol pens would be one item but if you then chose to go over it with a sparkle pen then that would be another item out of the five), stamp sets and to speciality papers etc. I chose a weather themed set for Michele to use. Originally we had the deadline of 16th of May to make the card and Michele made hers well in advance of that, unfortunately breaking my toe put a bit of a crimp in my crafting and combined with our computer being difficult (our Windows 10 vanished - we could get on the internet but couldn't upload photos without Windows 10, then trying to fix it ourselves resulted in us getting locked out of our computer - a very costly and frustrating set of events) I didn't manage to get a photo emailed until the 22nd nearly a week after the deadline.

Card designed by Michele Coffey 

In her own words, this is what Michele used to make her challenge card, "I used a white card blank, 2 colours of card plus white(pearl) , an embossing folder & glossy Accents. Oh yes-the graduated colour card on the background-I'm hoping that brings me to my "Five a Day"?!"

I'm sure you'll agree that Michele did a brilliant job - I love the graduated coloured card in the background and the embossing is so deep - I love it! All it needs is a sentiment and it would be the perfect card for someone feeling under the weather. I might have to invest in the die set too! It's a First Editions set called "Weather" (I think!) - see photo below.

First Edition Die Set

Michele chose a Docrafts Xcut die set called 'Bee Keeping' for my challenge and I'll be sharing my card and how I made it in the next blog post. A huge thank you to Michele for allowing me to share the card she made during our challenge. Her card is amazing and we both agreed it was a good challenge to do. We hope to challenge each other again soon and if you've been inspired to use one of your unused die sets that's currently lurking in your crafty stash, please leave a comment below or email a photo of your card so I can add it to this blog (email: craftynook@outlook.live.com). I hope you've enjoyed this post, if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx