I started card making in 2006, and soon after bought my first steel rule die, which was…wait for it…a single solitary circle! It cost a relatively eye watering amount, but I was very chuffed, as cutting out circles by hand can be quite annoying.

 

When I compare that start to the start of Two Red Robins, it’s just worlds apart. Cutting edge in terms of the sheer fineness of the die cutting technology, but also cutting edge in essentially throwing out the rule books. Don’t want to matt and layer anymore? Okey dokes! Don’t want a square or a rectangle, or a stepper card shape? Well, that’s absolutely fine, grab your pinflair or your construction acetate, and create your own vision of wonky fabulousness! Because that’s nature, isn’t it? It’s not all right angles and perfect circles, it’s organic, it grows in its own way, and it does its own thing, hurray! 

 

And that’s why I jumped on the Two Red Robins journey. I mean it helped that it was lockdown and that I had more time to craft than ever before, but the first collection was a ‘wow’ moment for me. My head initially rejected the notion that barbed wire and a bucket were dies that I should entertain, but my heart got it…

 

‘Oh, ok, so I need something that the robins would actually sit on, and there’s actually a lot of barbed wire and buckets found on farms, or allotments or gardens, so yes I’ll be needing those, thank you very much’!

 

And so, it began. I had fun trying to guess what kind of dies would follow and how the collections would evolve, and some of those guesses became realities, but some of them have been so left field, I have to applaud the team’s imagination. Who knew we needed a little steam train on its own bridge? Or an old car, or a broken wheel, or a caravan? 

 

There are also animals in my die collection that I never knew I’d need: small scruffy owls? Tick. Squirrels? Tick. A mouse called Thimble under a mushroom? Yes please! In hindsight I can’t imagine a world without Benji bunny or Harriet hare. How sad would that be?

 

Ditto flowers. I wasn’t a flower or butterfly fan previously (I know, weird), but now I know the names of some flowers that you can’t buy from a petrol station, it makes walks in the countryside much more interesting. And layering up the extremely fine wildflowers from the Summer Breeze collection was a joy. When I first cut them out, I couldn’t believe how fine they were, genuinely quite astonishing. 

 

While I collected all the first complete collections, I soon realised my storage capacity couldn’t keep up, so I had to choose the dies that spoke to me most. I’m a very organised person, so it does make me twitch a bit not having them all, but the ones I have, I love. 

 

I haven’t always remembered to photograph all my cards along the way, as I’m often making last minute cards for people I barely know that provide me with an excuse to tailor a card based on a few random things I’m told about them, and that’s why I love my collection: there’s always something appropriate in there to work with, and they’re always well received. 

 

So far, and we’re only two years in, which is very exciting, there are still some dies that I imagined in the early days, that haven’t arrived yet, so I shall continue to get that little thrill every time I get an email telling me about a new collection, because one day, another imagined die will pop out in reality and that always makes me very happy. 

 

Happy 2nd Birthday, Two Red Robins!

A guest post by Natalie Randall