Enhancing Projects with Border Punches

I enjoy using border punches on all sorts of projects and during this past year some great new punches become available on the market. I have a special fondness for a few of the Martha Stewart “Punch Around the Page” punch sets which include a border punch and a matching corner punch. These punch sets will let you put your design uniformly completely around the edge of a rectangle or square. As a result these punches are never far from my scrapbook table. I think border punches are beautiful on their own, but they can take on a new look when you layer them. I have created two examples with a few of the punches I own. First a layout with pictures from the beautiful Shenandoah Valley where my sister in-law and her husband have a farm called Tall Oaks.


In this layout I wanted lots of earth colors, blues, greens and touches of burnt red and brown. Since my layout design was simple, I added a punched border to add interest to the grouped pictures. This is where I used a Martha Stewart punch set. I used a light green paper to punch the border design and then backed it with a bold blue color so the punched design would really stand out on the page. I wanted a nice break between the pictures and my title area, so I took a simple Fiskars scallop punch and punched 3 strips in different colors, gradually changing from the bold blue to tan color. When placing the strips I made sure each row of scallops offset the design with the previous row. The result was a nice texture break in the page than really anchored the pictures at the top.

I love making cards almost as much as I do scrapbooking. While I’ve only been at it a year or so, it has been a rewarding experience. I have found people appreciate so much the time you take to make a personal card. I got inspired to use border punches more in card making when I attended a Stampin’Up class hosted by Rochelle Hart, a friend of mine who is a Stampin’Up demonstrator. We made a number of beautiful cards that day, but I did come away with a favorite.


The card has an embossed rose that is painted with water based ink (the kind of ink you buy to re-ink stamp pads). Rochelle taught us how to do this in the class. Both the rose stamp and the ink are from Stampin’Up. The card incorporated a layered punch design that is so easy to do. For my card above I used the Fiskars lace border punch. Once again the pattern is offset in the two punched rows to create a more interesting look. I really like the touch of elegance the punched rows add to the card. Now when I sit down to make a special card, I take a second look at my punches to see how they might enhance my project!