About eighteen months ago my friend Elisabeth gave me an older set of nested diamond dies that I admired and I've been periodically obsessed with them ever since. I've cut and layered the shapes a bunch of different ways, including multiple variations on argyle. Then, the other night, when I was trying to fall asleep, I suddenly thought of doing layers of the negative space that remains after the diamonds are cut out. As it turns out, this was a really good idea and I'm glad I woke up enough to email it to myself! ;)
The only counter-intuitive thing to remember about "layering" negative space is that you have to use the smallest shape in the lowest/farthest back layer, and get progressively bigger as you move towards the top of the card. Once you wrap your mind around that, the process is exactly like layering regular diecuts. Oh and as a bonus, you can take a few of the shapes you've cut out of lower layers and add them to the top of the card, for even more texture and interest. I distressed the edges of my positive and negative diamonds, added a bit of grungy stamping to my sheet music layer, and did some machine stitching. You'll notice I went only moderately wild with embellishments... not out of any newfound minimalist tendencies, but because the more I added, the less you could see the diamonds. I couldn't resist grabbing my punch board and making a custom envelope for my finished card.
And now I really must be going, because I have quite a few sets of nested shape dies, and I'm kind of curious if this concept will work with ALL of them...? ♥
Gorgeous, Looking forward to your experimenting with the other shapes, Thanks for the information on placement and I will give it a go.
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