When creating a craft project such as a card, tag, scrapbook, junk journal, or some other type of mixed media art, where do you all gather your decorative elements? Do you fussy cut out your shapes and sentiments or do you die cut them out using special machines such as the Sizzix BigShot, Cricut Maker, Brother Scan and Cut, or other fancy machinery?
I tend to do both hand cutting out my elements for placement in my journals and cards as well as use my Sizzix Vintaj BigKick and Cricut Explore Air 2 die cutting machines. Sometimes finding just the right shapes for a project can become a challenge if you do not own certain die cutting equipment or have a subscription to access certain types of images to print and cut. However, there is a solution.
Let’s say you wanted to make an aged themed photography junk journal and wanted to incorporate vintage shaped hardware made of card stock and chipboard, such as gears, vintage cameras, filmstrips, and photos of people. If you didn’t own those dies or machines that sectioned out those shapes, you could purchase them already cut. There are many shops that offer a variety of themed die cuts for sale.
back of junk journal folio with die cut vintage camera shape 
Front of junk journal folio with die cut gears, filmstrip, and picture wheel shapes
You can also find photos of vintage people on Etsy, like I did.
If you do own an electric die cutting machine, such as the Cricut Explore Air 2 then you could always access their free images on Cricut Design Space. That can be very useful. You can take it a step farther by uploading an image to it too. To see this process, check out my YouTube video on it.
In that video I use gears from my latest freebie kit “Rustic Beauty”. They are uploaded, cut out, painted, and added to my junk journal. Click here to download the free kit.
These cut shapes bring fun personality to many works, as do fussy cut images. Although it is less time consuming to use your die cutting machines, you can still get satisfying results from cutting out your own flowers, tags, people, borders, and more from designer papers. There are so many printed collections available, as well as from digital versions for consumption. Even old books and magazines offer and array of images that can add beauty to your art when fussy cut out.
Just have fun piecing together your resources. I’m sure your art endeavors will be a success!
I hope this post helps. Happy Crafting!
To see the completed journal flip through please watch this YouTube video:
If you are interested in purchasing this folio insert it is available in my hybrid etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/listing/753692096/vintage-african-american-journal-folio?ref=shop_home_feat_2&pro=1&frs=1 .
Multimedia Crafts Digital 