boho blossom punch tutorial and over 14 looks from one stamp

If I said you could get over 14 different looks from just one stamp using several punches, would you believe me? I had a hard time believing this myself, but I discovered yesterday that the boho backgrounds medallion is truly the most versatile chameleon of the Stampin' Up! catalog. That single stamp is absolutely amazing in the number of different looks it can produce. And I'm about to show you how create some (though by no means all) of them.

The first 7 looks are not amazing in technique, but are a great way to showcase how the look of a stamp changes just by using different punches in combination with the stamp.

Basically I just stamped the medallion several times and each time used a different circle punch to punch out the image. As you can see, there is no wrong circle punch to use with this stamp -- they all look different and great! And, of course, these are just solid circles. You can get a bunch of other new looks by making frames using two different sizes of circle punches. Totally awesome!

And now for the cool technique part and the tutorial. The technique was originally discovered by another Stampin' Up! demonstrator, Dannie Graves, who was experimenting with her scalloped punch one day and figured out how to make a new shape with that punch simply by punching the shape twice, slightly offsetting the image the second time. I know that may sound confusing, but watch how I applied this technique to one of the flowers in the boho blossoms punch, and I think it will become very clear.

First, stamp the boho backgrounds medallion image on a piece of card stock. It can be a scrap piece, just as long as the image that you want to punch out with the flower of your choice (in this case the largest flower) is all on the card stock.

Insert the stamped image into your boho blossoms punch and punch it out as usual.

Now use temporary adhesive or a very small piece of regular adhesive to attach the flower to a piece of scrap thin paper, such as typing paper. The thinness of the paper is very important, because you will be punching through both with the boho blossoms punch again and the punch will not go through two pieces of card stock.

Insert the piece of paper with the punched flower attached into the boho blossoms punch using the same flower image, but shift the flower slightly to the left or right so that the "points" of the petals fall in between the previous points. Hopefully the photo will make this a little clearer.

Punch out the new flower.

What you are left with looks like this photo when you put the new punch flower on a piece of colored card stock. Now you need to separate the card stock flower from the typing paper.

And this is the shape that you will be left with. It will have twice as many poionts as the original for a toally new look. Cool Huh?

You can do this with the scalloped circle punch, of course, but also with each of the flowers in the boho blossoms punch. So here is a chart showing images stamped with the boho backgrounds medallion and punched with the scalloped circle and boho blossoms punch on the left, and the punched twice on the right. And, amazingly, all of them look absolutely great!

So there you go. A new way to use your boho blossoms punch and a multitude of ways to use the medallion stamp from the boho backgrounds set. If you ask me, that one stamp alone is worth the $15.95 price tag of the boho backgrounds stamp set but, of course, the set includes 3 additional stamps, all of which are pretty cool! So is this the very best set in the new Spring Summer Collection? You tell me.