A foamy fix! Quick, cheap and easy fix for Bigz dies.

If you have ever bought Bigz dies second hand, you may have run into this problem. Even if you have bought them new and just used them a lot it may have happened to you. Specifically on the small sections, in my case the small circles. The paper starts to get stuck and unless you pick each bit out as soon as its done, you will end up with a very compacted section which can affect its cutting ability. And even if you remove the paper every once in a while eventually the foam with compact itself down to nothing and this will happen over and over which is what happened to me below.
 

As you can see in the first  photo, the paper is compacted in the space quite tightly. In the second and third the paper has been removed, and you can see that the foam has flattened into the space and is no longer useful.

So to fix this its quite simple! All you need is some foam....
 

 

And some glue. My particular favourite for this is Tombo Mono Multi glue. This stuff is great and sticks really well!

 

 

So all you do is cut foam pieces that will fit over the space and just run it through your die cutter as if you are cutting out a shape like normal. Then take those pieces out, run a bit of glue in the space and replace the foam pieces. I used 2 to fill it to the original foam line but it really depends on how deep you need it to go for your particular die. Voila! Good as new!

 

As you can see, I've run it through with my paper and it works!! Now I don't have to stop what I'm doing mid project and painstakingly remove the huge bunch of paper every time! 

Ps- this most likely wont be as much of a problem if you use your die as and when you need it, with only one sheet of paper each time. I, however, use tags a lot lately which is what this die is. So I tend to cut several sheets at a time which is what I love about bigz dies. 

Well that's me out, I hope you found this quick fix useful! I know I will now keep some foam hidden away just in case!

Have a crafty day!

~Sam.~