I just love the new Martha Stewart border punches.  I have plenty of border punches now but I was really excited by the Martha ones, they had easy to use corner punches to match!  But it got me thinking, a border punch only does a straight line – or does it?  I remembered back to when I was a kid, doing lots of craft with my mum, learning to clip in fabric and paper so that it would curve around a shaped line.  So this is when I thought I would try out my new Martha Punches and do just that…. and here are the results:

 

To achieve a shaped border, follow these simple steps:

1. punch out your straight border from the edge of cardstock or paper and trim off so that you have a 1cm ’strip’ at the top of the punched edge.  A medium weight paper will work best for this as its sturdy enough that it won’t tear but still pliable enough to shape easily.  Cardstock and lighter weight paper will also work.  Basic Grey weight papers are perfect I find !

2. Snip along (or clip in as its called usually) the edge, not too close to the punched out border, but enough that you end up with a fringed look.  The closer your snips, the more smooth the final edge of your shaped border.

 

3. WITHOUT using any adhesive, shape your strip of paper along edge of your ‘mat’.  The trick is to shape it snip by snip, gently easing the paper to that it will stretch slightly where it needs to.  This takes practice.  By doing this step, before adhering, you will be able to have more control over the stretching.

 

4. Finally, add adhesive to the back of your ‘mat’ and place your strip down, snip by snip, until its all stuck down and ready for your project.  Of course, you can use it on any size, adding multiple lengths of border side by side to make it continuous

My ‘wanna be elves’ in this months gallery also uses this punching technique, check out the gallery!!!  I used the oval shape with the edging on this christmas card – of course a new stampavie image to show off to you too!

 

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