Sneak Peek Karen Burniston Spring 2018 Die Collection

Happy Mid-May!

Starting today the Design Team is free to share projects made using our Spring 2018 collection. These 12 new dies will start shipping to stores the last week in May with website order being shipped in the orders received starting the first week of June. If you're interested in purchasing any of these dies, please consider giving your local store a chance for your business. The store orders will go out first and you'll save shipping charges by shopping locally. 

I like to think of the dozen new dies as falling into four categories: Pop it! Say it! Charm it! and Shape it! Watch the preview video here:

We also have a downloadable/printable catalog supplement for this collection - view it here: Spring 2018 Catalog

Pop it!

There are three new pop-up dies that offer a little something for everyone.

The Circle Charm Pop-up is absolutely generic, plus easy and quick to assemble. The pivoting action of the front circle provides double-duty decoration because it will pivot to the inside as the card is opened.

I like to think of the Circle Charm Pop-up die as a hybrid between a Pivot Card and the Charm Accordion. Watch for the assembly video in the coming week to show how it can be changed up and amped up. The set includes 11 individual dies, giving you lots of circle and ring combinations for your pop-up. For this card I easily converted the solid circles to rings and then chained them through the pop-up so that the large lanterns (Camping Charms) all hide behind each other when the card is closed but then reveal as the card opens. 

The Tent Pop-up is the most specific of the new pop-ups, but is packed with value for creating a complete scene. You get everything - the tent, rivets, extra platform, stump, pop-up fire pit and rocks. Add in the Camping Charms for even more accessories and Word Set 6 for some great greetings.

Obviously you can use this tent for camping and outdoor cards, but also think of it more generically. It's a great guy card, for Father's Day or any day. You can make it a beach tent. It works great as a play tent for kid cards and invitations. How about a card for a teacher to say "enjoy summer vacation"? Could it be styled like an A-frame log cabin? A gnome house? This is why I love die cutting - you can so easily change things up!

The Upsy Daisy Pop-up is full of possibilities with adaptable platforms that will raise items high in the card and shift them over the outside edges of the card. With the pieces included, you can easily string together three decorative squares and as the card opens, the outer two will lift, separate and pull the middle one up. It's the type of card you'll want to open/close/open/close.

When you open the Upsy Daisy all the way until it's almost flat, you'll get the greatest lift and separation on the squares. Take the slack out of your twine, however, and you can stop the card open at 90 degrees (traditional pop-up display) and the squares will sit close together as shown in the card below. Watch for an assembly video later this week to show even more possibilities with the Upsy Daisy.

Say it!

There are two new dies to help you caption your cards perfectly. The Alphabet is uppercase and sized to coordinate perfectly with the previously-released Numbers set. 

Then we have Word Set 6 - Summer, which can be mixed and matched within the set to make some great combinations, as well as mixed with previous word sets for even more possibilities. 

Charm it!

Charm dies have become the perfect little accessory dies for our brand. By leaving them as charms, they can be suspended on all the generic pop-ups, including the Charm Accordion to add detail. Our customers report that they love the option to decorate a card using image dies without necessarily always needing to stamp and color images. Obviously the pop-up dies work well to showcase stamped images, too, but it's nice to have the option to decorate with dies.

The Camping Charms is the largest of the new sets. We wanted a mix of sizes in this set with some being smaller and sized to match the scale of the Tent Pop-up but then also a couple of larger charms to work well on the fronts of cards and on the other pop-ups. All of these charms work wonderfully with our animal die sets to accessorize. Simply cut off the hang holes and they become props.

The Sweet Treats Charms are small, adorable and might make you hungry. Again, they can look so cute being held by the Animal dies, or used on any of the pop-ups for a summery (or should I say "yummery"?) theme. 

The Beach Charms will coordinate perfectly with the previously-released beach-themed dies, but can also be used independently. I particularly like the idea of using the flamingo with the House and Fence die set to fill the yard! 

Shape it!

And finally, we have added some much-needed generic nested shape dies to our brand. Each set includes 7 dies, four of which have a fun crosshatch pattern on the edges and three that are solid shapes with a decorative score line for a classy polished look. The largest shapes are sized to fit a standard A2 card leaving a thin border, but they also work well on larger cards. The crosshatch pattern is generic but visually interesting and drawing it brought me right back to my engineering days!

Throughout this week you'll see ideas from the Design Team using the new release, as well as the products showing up on the website for pre-order, and videos being uploaded onto the product pages. Also join us on Thursday for a blog hop featuring a mix of Karen Burniston branded dies with Brutus Monroe products. You can hop through our team's blogs to get inspiration for mixing the two lines together and be in on prize opportunities, too.

It's a great week for inspiration!

Happy Crafting!