Pull out your punches!

It has been said by a friend of mine, that I hold on to things I don't need. That may be true of some things, but not about the item in question... paper punches. Her feeling was that since I have a cricut and more that a few carts I have no need for punches. As she says, "You can just cut it out on the cricut." We I really started thinking about it and looking at my punches and this is what I came up with.

first let me post a few pictures of what looking at my punches inspired. I played a little with three of them.

I started off playing with two edge punches. It was fun to make the rosettes on their own and then I spotted a photo sitting there and whipped up a layout.

Then I had some rosettes cut, but not assembled. Now I love my Tim Holtz mini rosette die, but it just looked plain. I decided it needed to be dressed up. I decided to cut different color centers with the cricut and for some reason my circles weren't coming out perfectly round. Well some were, but not all of them, so I grabbed the circle punch and it was quicker than getting out a cart, finding the image, selecting the size, speed, and pressure, loading the mat, and cutting. They also came out perfectly round. I hope you can see the difference in these pictures.

Then I started putting the rosettes together. It just looked too plain. I grabbed a snowflake punch and cut it so it lookes like leaves or a branch sticking out. I thought that showing them side by side would show the difference, but before I glued it down I moved the embellished center to the plain one and that is the bottom picture.

Anyway, I know I am cheap and won't spend money on a lot of things, but good tools make scrapbooking so much easier. I say buy all the tools you can afford and have space to house. I personally have room for both my cricut and my punches. I will continue to buy punches as my budget allows and as I find ones that I think I can use in more than one way. Hope you have fun playing with your punches.