Behind the Scenes

Over the years I’ve had a lot of fun putting together some handmade items, and with last years Deco Personal Edition I took that to new areas with the custom made tuck boxes with personalized die cuts. It was a real challenge to develop those techniques but the results were great, and for the new Tendril project I’ve been able to advance this even further.

The Tendril Trilogy Megatuck and the Ascendant Special Edition both feature custom construction, die cuts and great little details, and I thought it would be fun to show you the steps needed to make one of these items. We’ll look at the Ascendant Special Edition today, just to give you a feel for the craft.

Making one of these tuck boxes involves a lot of steps. First we need to prepare the paper for printing and cutting. Due to the nature of the cutting machinery, we need to print alignment marks onto the paper, but the cutters can’t see black ink on black paper, so step one is to apply some white stickers to the corners of the paper. I printed a template to verify that they end up in the right place each time.

Next we have to print the design of the tuck box onto the paper, using a laser printer. Along with the design, we get special those alignment marks that ensure the box is cut exactly where it should be.

After the design is printed, we need to apply the inner paper color using spray adhesive to give the box a double thickness and more sturdy feel. Those are set aside to dry to make sure the papers stay together during cutting.

Then comes the tricky part, cutting! Each box takes two passes through the cutter. First is a light cut that scores all the fold lines, and then the main cut which cuts the outer edge and the detail on the back of the box. After a couple minutes we now have a perfectly cut special edition tuck.

Now the tuck is ready for the foil. We use a special foil that is designed to adhere only to laser printer toner. In the previous step we printed the design onto the paper, and now it is ready to accept the foil. We cut a piece of gold foil and lay it over the entire tuck, and then run it through our laminator. The heat sticks the foil to the design, and we can peel it off to reveal the finished piece!

With all those steps done, the only thing left is to fold the box and glue it together. As you can see, making these custom creations is not a quick task and has taken a lot of experimentation to get right.

I hope that you enjoyed seeing a little but more about the design and craft process at Encarded. We always work to make new things that go above and beyond the norm, and hopefully items like the Special Edition show our dedication to cards and their design.