Simon Says Stamp Falling Stars Die

[ShortWizard]

Does anyone else have this die? My order finally arrived today - 11 days after I placed the order! - and I was so excited to get this die, having seen it on a couple of cards online. It looked like it cut the whole card front and I expected a solid die with raised cutting surface for the stars, but it's trimmed irregularly around the edges of the outer stars and no matter what I do it leaves an impression of the irregular edge of the die on the card stock. I use the Big Shot and the same sandwich I use for all other dies and on this one I left off the metal adapter plate, thinking that would help but it didn't.

I emailed them to see if I can return it without being subjected to their 20% restocking fee, we'll see what they say. It wasn't cheap, either - it was $22.99 - you'd think they could have left the rest of the metal on the die for that price! I am not at all pleased with SSS.

[iamvics]

Kristina Werner is the designerhttp://www.kwernerdesign.com/blog/?page_id=8979 She does tons of videos and may have one for this die. You can contact her at the top of the page.

[starofmay]

Hey Jackie! Kristina here.

I, too, have noticed those pesky indentations. However, I think the way you feed it into your die cutting machine will help. I've noticed that when I feed it into the machine with the short end first (the most stars or the least stars), the indentations appear. But when I turn the die 90 degree so that the long edge goes in first, I get no indentations.

Have you tried turning the die around to see if you get a different result? Hope our dies aren't defective. I've heard from multiple people that they don't have this issue at all.

Kristina

[ShortWizard]

Thanks, Kristina. I did try that and it works a little better, thanks for the tip. I also found that I have to use my old MP platform instead of the long solo platform and solo shim for minimal indentations. I am not saying the dies are defective, but I do think they would have worked much better had they been made from a full rectangle of metal rather than being trimmed they way they are.

[starofmay]

Glad to hear it's working better for you.

And I agree, having a full metal plate would be ideal. I think they made it that way because a full plate would have been even more expensive.

[GarnetJ]

I just noticed that Simon sells a metal plate "for thin dies". Would this be helpful? I might go back and look because I just now ordered Falling Stars.

[JanaM]

GarnetJ -- My thought on the plate is that it will help if your problem is that a die isn't cutting through the whole way. So if the die is cutting you don't need it with this die. I'm thinking that the best way to avoid the lines that can happen is to turn the die around as Kristina suggested. The plate is a good thing to have on hand if you ever run into cutting challenges.

[starofmay]

I just did a video using the Falling Stars die and included the tip I shared above...