Sharon and Mark should be back from their trip to Alabama to visit Jess, Scott and the girls. Sharon shared some wonderful photos which she posted in one of the last emails. I hope you all got to see a few. Since Sharon’s been away it’s given me a bit of a vacay too, from posting. I am recovering from a really nasty cough that hung around for a little over two weeks and the doctor is attributing to allergies! So I’ve been glad to have the time off.
I taught my Velum Card class on Friday and brought my Spellbinders Platinum to use. I have a bad rep of breaking store machines and I’m not familiar with the Crossover Sharon uses so if I was going to break a machine it was going to be mine! My plates, especially one, are really warped. I have a new set but I don’t want to break them out as I know they will become warped really quickly. So I thought I’d Google “fixing warped cutting plates”. There were a number of videos but when I saw Jennifer McQuire did one, that’s where I looked. I will link to the video later in my post. I took a chance as Jennifer is my spirit guide, fairy godmother, on-line mentor, and goddess of all things cardmaking.
Here is what I started with. It’s in pretty sad shape.
Jennifer began by boiling a large pot of water. She then placed her plate arched side up on a cookie sheet in her sink and slowly added boiling water to the cookie sheet. She then put the pot on top of the warped plate, pressing it down on the cookie sheet. Your plate will be sitting in boiling water and pressure will be put on it by the heavy pot of boiling water on top. She let her’s soak for 20-25 minutes.
Here is how my experiment went. As you can see my plate is seriously warped. When I placed it on the cookie sheet in the sink and poured the water, first my glasses fogged up and I couldn’t see anything!
Then when I put the heavy pot on top it wiggled and threatened to slide off my plate my plate was so warped! Good news, I held it in place for about a minute and the Magic must have started to work because it stayed steady, centered on the plate.
Because my plate was so badly warped I set my timer for 30 minutes, made a cup of coffee and started writing this up. Buzzer just went off, time to check ⏰.
Not entirely successful, however, it did substantially decrease the arch of the warp.
I have a second plate that is not as badly warped and I’m going to try again with this one.
To compare the two, the top plate is the one I just finished trying to flatten. The bottom plate is the second one I’m trying. The second plate isn’t as warped as the original one and you can see while the first didn’t fully flatten, it did lose a lot of its most severe warping.
This time the pot didn’t threaten to slide off. The morale of this attempt is don’t let your plates get as warped as my first one was! I set my pot down, set my timer for 30 minutes (figured it couldn’t hurt to have extra time) and waited.
Before I removed the pot the plate looked flat.
However, after I removed the pot and checked the plate, it was flatter but not fully flat☹️.
I’m giving it one last go. I’m using a bigger cookie sheet and laying both plates on the sheet and trying again. I’m leaving it for about an hour this time around because of two plates and adding more water to my pot. NOTE: it didn’t work well, lesson - only do one plate at a time.
I tried one last time with the less warped plate of the two. Here is my result.
It still is not fully flat, but it is substantially improved. Like my card making when I follow Jennifer’s instructions, hers still come out better than mine!
Jennifer’s plates came out flat and the bits of cardstock embedded in the grooves made by the dies came out so her plates were also cleaned by her process. I strongly recommend you view Jennifer’s YouTube video
HERE. Jennifer talks about why our plates warp, how to minimize warping, and she has a guest nerd, her husband, give us the technical reason this method works and why you shouldn’t but your plates in the oven. Lots of great info from them both.
Also Jennifer talks about Gemini plates in particular (although the method above works on all manufacturers plates) and a special hack she uses for her Gemini machine.
I do a lot of die cutting and the majority of my classes (thank you, again Jennifer) involve LOTS of die cuts. I give my plates a serious work out. I’m considering asking for a Gemini Jr. for Christmas this year to help my process and give my arm a rest. While I wasn’t totally successful with my plates, I think if you don’t let your plates get too badly warped Jennifer’s hack will help you. I will be using the helps and hacks in Jennifer’s video in the future.
That’s it for me for today. I’m looking forward to Sharon’s first video post vacay as new product didn’t stop coming just because she was away. I’ll finish with a funny. I wonder if Sharon had this happen on her way home?…
Have a good week everyone, get crafty and most of all Stay Safe.
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