Border and Corner Punch Tutorial

Many of you have commented on how pefectly lined up my borders are when I use the border and matching corner punches together. Below is a tutorial on my technique. I'm sure there are many ways to do this, but this system works best for me. I'm not one for measuring and fussy details so this way may not be perfect, but it usually works out for me.

First you need to punch one of the corners of your paper. The corners line up in the punches perfectly. You just need to fiddle a bit to get the corners to line up with the paper exacly. But if you push the paper against the bottom of the punch it will fit nicely into the paper guides.

Next use the border punch to make both sides away from the corner. I like to line up the last punch with one of the punches in the next. For me this works perfectly when lining up the next punch, but what this means is that the last scallop is punched through twice - once with each step. You can also use the picture guides in the punch itself, but these never work for me.

Next, lay down the piece of cardstock that you plan to mount in the 'frame' you are making. Make sure the corners aren't too far apart or too close together for your image. In the photo below, I made the frame a bit too small, but then I trimmed the paper with the image (very vanilla cardstock) once the frame was completed.

The next step is the trickiest. When you figure out where you want to put your corner (by using the 'guestimate' technique in the previous step) then you can punch your corner. YES - you can use these new corner punches where there IS NOT a corner. Amazing right? All you do is make sure you are NOT using the paper guides on the bottom of the punch. Instead, I turn the punch over and line up the previous scallop (like I do on the sides as mentioned above). Then I line up one side with the edge of the paper. You can see this if you turn the punch upside down. Then I punch it. The image below shows the two corners that are punched before they are cut.

As you can see in the photo above, it's pretty obvious where the edge of the paper should be to punch the rest of the border. I lay it down on my paper cutter and line the straight side that has been punched out with the blade on my paper cutter and cut.

Do this for both corners

next punch your edges up to the final corner as below

Then punch the last corner are you are done!!!!! After you make the frame you can trim up your image (like I mentioned above) and mount it on the frame like below