"Natural" Layout and Punch Tutorial

I whipped this page out last night lickety split (does that saying date me? LOL!). Under an hour... pretty good for me. It usually takes me 2 - 3 hours. I used the Pencil Lines sketch again. This was just a fun, non-person LO to do. I used the All Moments Remembered May kit again, for the paper and the AC felt letters. Still have lots of paper left from that kit.

Here's the layout. The tutorial for the punch will follow:

Here's a close up of the big felt flower, it's a Creative Cafe flower that I got last week. I stapled it on... I like how it ended up looking with the staples in it:

And, here's just the little flowers close up:

Punch Tutorial

Now, hopefully, I'll be able to explain this easily. If you look at the layout above, it looks like I ripped a sheet out of a tablet, but I didn't. I punched all those holes, with a single punch! I started out how anyone would and punched 3 holes, but they were all crooked, up and down...so I thought for a minute, how can I make these line up? I couldn't see the line I drew once I put the punch in place... if only this punch had an adjustable back like on the Crop-A-Dile. So, here's what I came up with. I took a scrap length of paper and put it in the punch, then on top of that I slid in the paper I wanted to punch, but not the whole way back, just to where I wanted the punch hole to be. I marked that with a pencil, took the paper out of the punch, took my ruler and drew a line the entire length of my scrap piece of paper:
Then, I lined up my "good" paper along the line and tacked it down with a few pieces of double sided tape. Now I can punch. Just put your paper into the punch and let your "guide" piece hit the back of the punch:
That's it, just slide it along until you have punched a whole row, or however many you want. I think this will work with a circle punch to get that stamped look, just do the same thing using a scrap piece of paper as your guide.

Look how straight the punched holes are:

Next, I just took my paper piercer and "ripped" each hole.

End result - looks like it came from a tablet. You can rough up the edges a bit to make it look more authentic:

I'm sure those of you with a Bind-It-All can do this in 2 seconds, but this worked for me and my $1 punch. Yep, $1 at Mikes on clearance.

On a side note: just wanted to wish my cyber pal ERIKA a Happy Birthday!! Visit her blog Scrapbook Obsession and wish her a Happy Birthday!


Have a great weekend!