Tuesday's Terrific Techniques and Tips: Punch Care

Today I thought I'd share a tip instead of a technique. I love using punches on my cards. Lately I've been getting a lot of questions about sharpening punches. I have good news, you probably have everything you need to clean and lubricate your punches right in your kitchen!
To sharpen a dull punch, just punch through a piece of tinfoil folded in half (creating a double layer of tinfoil). Repeat this a few times, and you should have a much sharper punch.
To lubricate a stiff or sticky punch, just punch it through a piece of wax paper folded in half (creating a double layer of wax paper). Repeat this a punch a few times and you should have a more lubricated punch. You may want to punch through some scrap paper a few times before you use it on nice paper as sometimes the wax paper leaves a residue on the punch.

Finally, I'll leave you today with a card made using Stampin' Up!'s curly label punch, word window punch, and large oval punch.

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Tile photo and recipe card holders

Welcome to another Tuesday's Terrific Technique. Today's tutorial is a great little gift I like to hand out, especially at Christmas. I'm going to show you 2 different versions; one using stamps and markers and one using vinyl. So, here it is, a recipe card (or photo) holder:
You will need:
2x2 stone tile (sold at most hardware/do it yourself stores in sheets of 36)
Clothespin
Strong adhesive (I used E600)
Vinyl OR Staz-on ink, a stamp, and Sharpie Markers
Ribbon

When you find the tiles, they will look like the picture above.

Remove 1 tile from the sheet and wipe it clean with a damp paper towel.

To stamp on the tile you will stamp an image in stazon ink directly onto the tile.

Color the image in with Sharpie markers. There is no need to seal the tile.

To use vinyl on the tile, cut out an image in vinyl.

Adhere the vinyl directly to the tile.

When you have the image you want on on the tile (in either ink or vinyl), adhere a clothespin to the back of the tile with a strong adhesive. Allow time for the glue to dry completely.

Tie a ribbon onto the clothespin, and you have a completed gift!

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Paper Bouquet

It is raining and just plain icky out today, but I had a sunny surprise when a beautiful bouquet of flowers showed up at my front door. My wonderful husband sent them just because. Inspired by his flowers, I thought I'd give you a break from embossing tutorials to show you how to make this pretty paper bouquet:
You will need:
Scallop Circle Punch or Die
Scissors
Double Sided Patterned Paper (here I used paper from Daisy Bucket Designs)
Floral Wire
Adhesive

First, punch out or use a cutting machine to cut/punch a scalloped circle.
The circles I used for this bouquet are 1 3/4"

Next, you will cut out 2 of the scallops from the circle as pictured above. You may discard the cut out piece. You will only need the circle.

Put adhesive on the 2 outermost scallops and adhere by overlapping the 2 outermost scallops on the opposite side of the gap. You should now have a cone shaped flower.

Bend the petals out slightly.

Take floral wire and curl the end into a small spiral shape (this will be the center of your flower).

Thread the floral wire though the tip of the flower.

Repeat the steps to create additional flowers, until your bouquet is the desired size. I have 2 dozen flowers in my bouquet. You can cut the floral wire to varying lengths to add more depth to your bouquet.
Here are a few more pictures of the finished product.

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Glitter Embossing

This technique is a really fabulous, simple technique. In fact, you've seen me use it on this blog before. I love the sparkle glitter gives, but I don't love the mess and how it often rubs off of the card. To make something lovely and sparkly I do the following steps.
1. Take 1 part glitter of your choice. I like Stampin' Up!'s dazzling diamonds because it is a very fine glitter.
2. Add the glitter to 1 part clear embossing powder and mix.
3. Use like normal embossing powder.
4.Store extra glitter embossing powder in a small empty container. I usually just use an old empty embossing container.
Here are a few different examples of what you can do with glitter embossing:


For this card I first stamped and colored in the ice cream Sundae. Then I covered the entire image with versamark ink and glitter embossing powder. The result is a complete image that sparkles.

It's a little tough to see, but for this card I stamped the cupcakes in brown pigment ink, sprinkled glitter embossing powder on and heated. Then I colored in the cupcakes. The result is a cupcake that is only outlined in glitter.
I hope you enjoyed today's technique. Please feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions.

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Faux Metal

I love embossing, so the next few Tuesdays, I thought I take you through a few of my favorite embossing techniques. First up: Faux Metal.

Today you'll need:
A piece of card stock. Any color will do.
Versamark Ink
Silver, Gold, or other metallic colored embossing powder
A Heat Gun
A Scissors or Paper Punch
A Stamp

Cover a section of your paper with Versamark, then sprinkle with embossing powder. The area covered by embossing powder should be larger than your stamp, but does not need to cover the entire paper.

Heat the embossing powder until set.

Cover the embossed area with Versamark Ink again, and sprinkle with silver embossing powder again.

Heat powder until set.

Immediately, while the embossed area is still hot, press a stamp into the embossed area.

You should now have an image set into the embossed area. If your image doesn't turn out the way you want, you can just reheat the embossed area until it liquefies, and try again.

Punch or cut out your image.

You should now have a faux metal tag that looks something like this.

Now all you have to do is add your faux metal tag to a project!

I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial. Next week we'll try out another embossing technique.

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Bleaching

First, let me apologize for my absence. I've just become a member of my favorite store's in-store design team, so I've been busily working away at that. I've also been asked to teach a few classes there, so needless to say life got a little busy. I'll be teaching classes starting in October, so if you're in the northwest Iowa area you can check out my favorite store, A Walk Down Memory Lane, and my classes in person. If not, you can always shop on line at www.awalkdownmemorylane.net.

For today's technique I thought I'd literally show you a page right out of my own technique journal. There are so many techniques out there, so I decided this was a good way for me to organize all the techniques I like or want to try into one place. I have the techniques filed alphabetically in a note book. There is an example of the technique and the directions on the page, so I can just open it up to a technique and start stamping.Here's a card I made by stamping with bleach. The stamp set is Stampin' Up!'s Trendy Trees.
I hope you all have a Terrific Tuesday!

Tuesday's Terrific Technique: Paper Pansy

Today I am starting a new feature on my blog. I love techniques, so every Tuesday I am going to try to share a technique or tutorial with you. Some of the techniques you may know, but hopefully many of them will be new.
I was playing around with my Scallop Circle Punch today and came up with this fun little paper pansy.
You will need:

2 pieces of patterned paper or card stock (or 1 double-sided piece). Here I am using October Afternoon's Cherry Hill line.

A scallop circle punch (I'm using Stampin' Up!'s scallop circle punch).

A good scissors.

Adhesive













Step 1:

Punch 2 circles from your paper of choice













Step 2:

Cut from the point of a scallop into the center of the circle. Do not cut all the way to the middle. Cut just short of the center of the circle.

Repeat this cut on EVERY OTHER scallop.














When you are finished your scallop circle should look like the picture below. Note the small area in the center of the circle where there are no cuts.
















Step 3:

Cut 3 scallops out of the circle (this will remove 1 pair of scallops and leave a single scallop). You should now have a gap in your circle.












Step 4:

Adhere the single scallop to the back of the double scallop across the gap. Your flower will now have a cone shape.













Step 5:

Repeat this process on your second scallop circle.













Step 6:

Layer your 2 scallop circles on top of each other and carefully curl the petals down. (At this point you can use a dot of glue in the center of you circles to adhere the circles together or you can skip to step 7 and use a brad, eyelet, or some sort of embellishment to hold your flower together).













Step 7:

Add a center to your flower. I used a 5/16" brad, which is also holding my 2 scallop circles together.













Step 8: Use your paper pansy on something! I added it to this card along with a little ribbon from American Crafts and a "Thinking of You" stamp from Stampin' Up!'s Sincere SalutationsDon't be shy. Let me know what you think of this tutorial or if you have any questions about this technique. As with all new things, I will have a learning curve with this. Let me know if I can do something differently to make things more clear. If you enjoy this new feature, I'll try to make it a regular Tuesday post. Thanks in advance for your feedback!