As most of you know I am an avid punch collector. If there's
a punch out there that I think has a vast variety of uses I want to own it.
Unfortunately when I went back to work full time outside of
the home 6 years ago my time to create was seriously affected. Hence I didn't
get much time to play, let alone keep up with what's new and current. As you
may have guessed that means I missed out on quite a few punch shapes I wish I
had been able to buy that are now retired.
Amongst my list of "wish I had" are SU's round tab
punch, designer label punch, butterfly punch, key tag punch and a "maybe" for the
slot punch.
I stalked Ebay for sometime and finally this last week I was
successful in finding listings for three of these punches that would ship to Canada
and were obtainable for a reasonable price. Reasonable is a relative term as
one of them did go quite high but I think it was still worth it.
I managed to snag the butterfly punch, round tab punch and
the designer label punch.
I had no luck in even finding listings for the key tag or the slot
punches.
This led me to play in my craft room to see if I could find
a solution to re-creating these two from other punches. I started with the key tag punch and I think I did pretty well.
I thought surely there are
others out there that wish they had this punch and would love a
solution/substitution so that they can create the great punch art that is out
there which utilize those shapes.
So without further ado here is my solution (it’s 2 fold) for
the key tag punch.
First, in researching this shape I had to try and obtain the
measurements of the finished shape. Unfortunately I don’t know anyone that owns it whocould check, nor do I own an older SU catalogue that includes it.I found out from the web that the shape is 1 inch in width and based on
images approx. the same length as the word window, which is 1 ¾ inches long.
So I cut a strip of cardstock 1 inch wide and played around
with my round and oval punches. I found that my large Punch Bunch (PB) oval
works perfectly.
I inserted the strip lacing it through only one need of the
punch, as shown below, and punched. I then marked of the 1.75 inch I need for
the length with a pencil and inserted the other end to punch the finished shape at the marking.
I now have a very nice replica of the key tag shape (left image) but it's not quite perfect. I trimmed the corners slightly with scissors to take away the harsh edge and resulting in the slightly rounded finish. It looks perfect (right image) to me.
Now you may say okay, that's great, but what if I want to
use the negative of the shape as a window? You can do that too, although it's
not quite as clean edged and requires a different oval punch. I used an oval that is one size smaller, the medium oval by Emagination (PB makes one the same size as well but I am not sure how it will work as I think the oval is oriented the opposite direction from the Emagination one)
Instructions as follows:
1) Mark with pencil the 1.75 inch length where you want
the window.
2) Then punche an oval inside the markings on either
end
3) use little scissors to cut across at the top and bottom to connect the 2 oval shapes to make the key tag negative.
And voila, you have a nice key tag shaped window.
Hope I've helped some of you that wish they had the key
tag punch.
And just in case you haven't seen any great punch art using
it, here's the link to my Pinterest board where I've collect a few ideas I've
found on the web:
http://pinterest.com/punchcrazy/su-key-tag/
Now I have to go and work on some recipes for the cute Valentine cards I've made and wish to share over the next couple of weeks (so far I have 8 punch art cards and have many more ideas floating around in my head).
