A Grand Calibur Christmas!

Hope Santa brought you some fun things this Christmas! Here I am with one of my prezzies, the Spellbinders Grand Calibur, wooooo hoooooooooooo!

Although I use my Nestabilities on almost every creation, when I FIRST saw this new die cutter, I thought "For GINORMOUS dies. Maybe I don't *need* it..." and maybe you're thinking that, too, if you mainly do card making and aren't sure how much you'd use the larger dies...well, you NEED it!! Even if you never buy any of the Grand dies (but you will, and so will I!!) it is so, SO worth being able to run an 8" x 11" sheet of cardstock through and cut as many of the regular sized Nestabilities dies as you can fit on the sheet in ONE pass, then flipping them over and embossing them ALL at once on the second pass! Let me show you!

Here I placed 6 of some of my favorite large Spellbinders labels (One, Eight, Fourteen, Fifteen) and new beaded circles and beaded ovals (just got these beaded dies so you haven't sen me use them on a project yet, but oh my word! They are so gorgeous, love the detail!) on one sheet of White Pure Luxury cardstock. (I could have actually placed them more closely and gotten some fancy tag dies on there too, did later, but didn't take pics of that)

Now put your cutting plate down on top over the dies and hold the end as you run it through to keep the dies on the far end from sliding around. Here they are all cut below from that one smooth, rolling pass! It goes through so easily, lately I've been feeling like I need to go to the gym and work out a little more to get the plates cranked through my 'bug! ;)

Flip your stack over after cutting and transfer the cut dies to the base plate, facing up, and add the tan mat and embossing plate. Roll through the Grand Calibur once.

Remove the plate and dies, and ta da! Now you have ALL these beautiful embossed dies in about a minute or two! This would have taken forEVER with my little 'bug, I'd still be cranking! And I LOVE not having to crop down the paper to fit on a smaller plate as well as not having to make so many additional passes! It really is going to save so much time and energy and I am excited to have all these embossed die cuts ready to go when I sit down to stamp! So for the dedicated crafter, I think this machine is worth its weight in gold! Highly recommended (looks super cute on my desk too in raspberry!) and of course now I have to get back to you soon with a review of the Grand Dies, Labels One and Four are first on my wishlist!! :)

Did you see the Gina K snippets have started? I'll be back soon with a few cards my kids made for me, more Christmas pics, stories, and handmade cards from friends, plus some some more "Mugs and Kisses" samples before our previews start next Monday!