IO - Stamp & Die Block Duo - A Review

Hello All - I had some time to play these past couple of weeks, where one of the things on my to do list was finish up next year's Christmas cards.  I have in mind to make one that showcases a lot of holiday cookies and candy. I'm not quite sure what the finished card will look like, but the basic theme made me want to play with these Stamp & Die Block Duo's from Impression Obsession.  Click on any photo to embiggen.

They've been around for a while, so should not be hard to find if you are so inclined.  I have two sets pictured below. Cookies and Candy.  I included the Re-inker bottle to give you an idea of the size when completed.  They are essentially the size of a paper charm you might buy from Jolee's Boutique, but here you have the added benefit of having made it yourself. Making your own embellishments always amps up the wow factor on your finished cards.  No question about it.  

Stamp the images on the paper of choice, here I am using brown ink on white cardstock so the finished cookies look like iced gingerbread.  I also stamped and embossed with white powder on craft cardstock to get a frosted cookie look. Play, play, play...

Line up the die so the edges cover the square outline and tape the die to the cardstock with some scotch tape.  If you skip the tape, you risk the die moving ever so slightly, and then your cookies will look a bit wonky.  My advice; use the tape.

Run it through your die cut machine and use a pick to pop out the cookies.  The bell, snowflake, and candy cane seem to be just a hair off.  I find that if you try to correct the placement of the die to fix that, then you have three others that are just a bit off.  So all in all, the cookie set works fine, but if you are a perfectionist, you could drive yourself nuts trying to get it j-u-u-u-u-st right.  Me?  I'm happy with the results. 

Next up is the candy set....It works exactly the same way as the cookies, but straight away you'll notice that the stamped candies are larger than the die cuts so even if you are off a bit with the placement, the dies will compensate for that giving you perfect little starlight mints and candy canes every time.  Again, the cat's eye ink pad is included to show you the finished size of the candy.  There are two sets in the final picture.

So - on a scale from one to ten, I give these guys a solid 8.  I knocked off one point for the size.  I'd like them to be a little bigger.  I knocked off another point for the slight imperfect cuts on the cookies.  Since it's only that set that had the problem, I should really give them an 8.5 out of 10.  Ok, I talked myself into it!  Done!