hi Suzanne thank you for joining me hope you're having a good day I'm having an awesome awesome day I wanted to do this quick video on introducing you to the Gemini it is right here and it's a fabulous die-cutting machine it's actually automatic it's brilliant super super powerful and if you've ever wanted to know about die cutting and embossing how it works especially how the Gemini works I take you literally through what I now am calling the Gemini 101 literally coming out of the box I'm going to walk you all the way through it and I even test three of the major brands both embossing and die-cutting in this video so I hope you like it yay my gem and I arrived it comes in a really sturdy brown box as you can obviously see I was very excited so I cut right into it and as you open it up you'll see tada there it is well I mentioned it's very well packed so here we are actually opening up the box itself and you can see everything's included inside there and our HSN configuration you get extra goodies so you start out with the instructions I'll get into that more then we're talking about the plates which I'll talk a lot about what these do later on in the video because I think that's some of the really confusing things about working with any embossing system is making what they call kind of the sandwich but they give you a ton of plates inside here to work with now this is the extra goodies that come with our HSN package and what you're getting in here is you're getting a whole bunch of dies you get a bunch of embossing folders and so it's a really nice value of course then I'm actually unwrapping the rest of it obviously you take all the plastic off yeah that's awesome and then you plug it in only five pages of essential instructions the rest are other languages I think one of the most confusing things about using an embossing tool or a die cutting tool is actually figuring out the layers and with the Gemini you get plenty of layers to work with which is great but I wanted to kind of clarify it okay you're lots of plates as you saw when you open up the box this is one of the base plates that's called the clear-cutting plate I'll definitely talk about layers and more in depth in just a second the next plate that you get is the magnetic shim it's one of my personal favorites because it keeps things nice and neat and organized then you get a rubber embossing mat that's used for doing really intricate embossing when you're not getting the correct pressure or you don't want to over pressure this is the metal cutting plate and that's great when you really need to increase more pressure on very very fine cuts the plastic shim you use a lot that's important and it's one of the basic plates in the kit and then the clearer cutting plate the second one you get is used at the very top layer you also get these wonderful embossing folders these are standard sized folders and you get a lot of dies so you can cut images right on the box this is showing how you peel it off the little cardboard that it comes with and you can see it just in that one package there's one two three four five different dies to work with and then that right there alone is an immense amount of creativity okay now it's time to talk about the sandwich this is how everybody refers to it and the best thing to do is always think start from the bottom and work your way up I find that to be easier so here's how it works let's go to the bottom you start with a clear cutting plate then you're going to see inside there is a frosted plastic plate or shim they call it a shim then there's a black magnetic shim as I said it was one of my favorites then with the die you put the blade side up then you have the material above that that you want cut and then the clear cutting plate on top of that okay so we're going to cut a die so we start off with a clear then there's the frosted plate then we're going to add the magnetic shim and then there's the die now this is really crucial be sure the blade side is up you'll feel it if it's down it's going to cut that magnetic shim and you don't want that to happen then what you're going to do is take whatever material you're cutting whether it's vellum or paper or cardstock put it on top and then finish it off with a clear plate okay so here's an example using the dyes that I showed you earlier there's the blade there's the flat side the smooth side and then there's the blade side you want to place it down and that magnetic shim is fabulous because it actually holds everything in place when you go to move it so it doesn't slide around and you can see I'm just going to cut one sheet of paper but I could do different pieces of cardstock you know you can fill the thing up I've got one little thing if I wanted to so just several ways to be able to do that so again I'm just showing you right there make sure the blade side is up facing you then of course I'm going to take my cardstock and I place it on top of it and then I'm going to finish it off with the other clear plastic plate that's included and then it's now a full sandwich and ready to go in the machine let's talk about the glorious machine itself there are three buttons that's very simple power pause/resume and reverse so you turn it on and once it's turned on now it's ready to emboss or to cut your dye now you're going to put the sandwich in there what's really neat is the machine automatically grabs it and it's going to take it through and automatically stop on the other side so you're no longer ever going to hand crank if you've done an old machine before or another stylus system what's also really awesome is if it does not fit correctly it will spit it back out at you to redesign the layers and the shims so that's another great feature many times though you don't need to go all the way through you have a little die you're doing on the edge so you can just go part way through reverse it back out towards you and then it'll be quicker that way now here it is it's come through and you'll see how beautifully it just cuts everything if you have a little warping at first it's kind of understandable because the machine is brand new but that'll kind of settle down if you can you do have warping you have too much pressure on your shims so you need to adjust that well let's embossed okay clear plastic plate there's your embossing folder you slip a piece of cardstock in there and then use your other clear plastic plate on top of that now of course you're just going to run it through the machine there it is clear embossing folder another clear plate the machine grabs it it runs it through and of course it stops automatically on the other side and I never get really get bored of the results I think it's great you can take a very inexpensive piece of paper and make it really beautiful and textured using embossing folders so let's build the next one alright here it is the clear plate the frosted plate the magnetic don't forget to put the blades towards you then you put the cardstock down the clear plate you're going to place it gently into the Gemini it says yum yum and it rolls right through automatically while you're sipping a cup of coffee isn't that great then what I really like is when you see the final results I take it and I pull it up and then I flick it to get some of the pieces out and then you pull it out and you're like wow look at that die isn't that beautiful alright let's do a Nana embossing folder again I'm setting it up there you can see there's the plastic piece then there's the embossing folder and then the other plastic plate you're going to put it the machine and of course the machine is going to magically grab it and it's going to run it through and hopefully at the other end you're gonna have great results what I did discover was so far in my test everything works identical so there was no additional shims I needed I didn't have to fiddle with anything to make it work and against a little hard to see but it really turned out beautiful a third and final test is with Stampin Up so here we go I'm setting up that famous sandwich there's the Stampin Up dies my cardstock and I'm going to run through the Gemini sames true with the embossing folder I found that through all three brands that the setup was identical I didn't have to do anything special or different than the standard instructions and there's what it looks like coming out and wallop up and finally here's some extra notes for the clear plates if you see marks on the clear cutting plates it's going to happen and that's okay they'll last a really really long time and then you can replace them down the road cracking noises sometimes when you put the plates through or a sandwich through you'll hear this cracking noise and it's the plates and again typically it's a-okay and then finally the warping of the plates eventually going to see there's going to start to bow or they'll curve what you want to do is you want to flip them over every now and then so they go through the Machine differently and that'll help reduce the warping of the plates but again no worries there okay if you loved the video please share it and also I'd love you to subscribe to my page and I'll keep putting up some great creative ideas for you thanks have an awesome day