Happy Valentine's Day!

Hi Everyone. I know it's been forever since I posted to the blog. I am so sorry about this. Unfortunately during the past year I became swept up in my Twilight obsession, and, more to the point, my obsession with writing Twilight fan fiction. I continued to stamp, though not as frequently as I used to, and I simply ran out of time for blogging.

Now, however, I am ready to dip my toes into the blogging world again. Probably not daily, as I used to do, but you should see something new form me every couple of weeks. :-)

Just to show you that I haven't been completely slacking off, I came back with a tutorial of sorts. It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of punches and I really love the new type of punches Stampin' Up! introduced in the new Occasions mini catalog. I love the traditional way to use these punches, as is shown in this first card -- simply to make pretty corners on your main stamped surface or on a mat!

However, as I was working on Valentine's Day cards this past week, I discovered another way to use these, and I thought I would share this with you. Now, it is entirely possible that someone else out these in stamping land has already thought of this idea. If so, I apologize for thinking this was something new, but I promise I came up with it independently, since I no longer have time to read stamping blogs or other stamping sites. But if someone else did think of this first let me know via comment and I will be sure to update the post.

OK, so here goes the mini tutorial. Start with one of the new corner punches. I used the pinking hearts corner punch. Punch a corner of a scrap piece of card stock just as you normally would.

Your card stock should look like this.


















Now insert the punched card stock into the smaller photo corner of the Photo Corners punch (available in the Idea Book and Catalog) as shown in the picture and punch. (You can save the larger photo corner for another project.)

Once you punch it out, your piece should look like this. And you can use it alone as a fancy photo corner just as I did in this picture.

Or, if you prefer, you can use it with the large or small photo corners punched out of a contrasting color of card stock with the Photo Corners punch. Here you see the punched piece layered over a small photo corner.

Here you can see the punched piece layered over a large contrasting photo corner.

In this picture I trimmed off the last heart on each side of the punched piece and layered it over a large contrasting photo corner.

And here is what that trimmed piece would look like layered over a small contrasting photo corner (sorry for the blurriness of the photo)

Here I took two corners trimmed off straight and layered them onto a contrasting large photo corner.

And here I used the scrap card stock left over from punching to layer on top of the large contrasting photo corner.

If you'd like to see what the corner might look like on a card, here's one I made last week, I used the I {Love} Love jumbo wheel with versamark ink to make the background on a real red card base and embossed it with clear embossing powder. I added a strip of black card stock punched with the new pinking hearts border punch. To accent the strip I used some retired real red zigzag ribbon. for the main image I used the Like-O-Meter stamp that I colored with my real red and basic black stampin' write markers. I used the real red and pretty in pink stamping write markers to color in the "meter". I then used 2 way glue and real red fine glitter on the heard, and the versamarker and clear embossing powder over the pretty in pink part of the card. I added mats in basic black, real red and whisper white. Then, as a final touch, I added a small real red photo corner layered with the pinking heart photo corner punched out of pretty in pink card stock.

And here is another way to use the heart photo corner over a mat so just the hearts show through.

You can do the very same thing with the new Scallop trim corner punch and the photo corners punch, as shown in this picture.

Here is what the punched piece looks like layered over a contrasting small photo corner.

And here is what a punched piece looks like layered over a large contrasting photo corner.

Here is what the trimmed piece would look like layered over a large contrasting photo corner with the two end pieces trimmed off.

And the same piece layered over a small contrasting photo corner.

Here is what the remaining scrap would look like layered over a small contrasting photo corner.

And last but not least, the same leftover scrap layered over a large contrasting photo corner.

And that's basically it. I hope I managed to show you at least one new idea in all these pictures that you can use on your own cards. Happy Valentine's Day and happy stamping!