random.on purpose.: Tutorial: Border Punch Squares

I had to come up with a gift for Greg's boss's girlfriend - we're going to her 50th birthday party in about an hour (so why am I doing this now, you may ask? Because I'll forget or otherwise get sidetracked...) Anyway - she's one of those that pretty much gets whatever she wants on her own, so it's hard to know what to get her. I decided to make her a dry-erase calendar, and it looks like this:

These are not very good pics, because by the time I finished the project, pretty much all the natural light coming in my window was gone, so oh well...

These are made using the frames you can get at Michael's (and other places) that are intended for a scrapbook page. The glass is what makes it a dry-erase calendar - you can write on the glass with a dry-erase marker, and wipe it right off! I made these for all of my kids a couple of Christmases ago, and they all liked them, so I decided to make one for Carol. I wanted to keep it neutral color-wise, and kind of on the elegant side, because she carries herself that way, so I don't really think she's into "cute".

I used the papers from CTMH's "Creative Basics Silhouette" collection, SU's "Carte Postale", CTMH's "Playful Petals", and a few punches - Marvy Uchida Scalloped Squares in two sizes, and Fiskars lace border punch. The alpha stamps are some generic foam-mounted ones I dragged home eons ago.

The tutorial is for the fancy-schmancy lacy-looking squares I made for the individual days. I cut my squares 2", but found out (after the fact) that if I'd cut them 2 1/8" instead, the squares would have been even prettier. This is what I mean:

But, it is what it is - cut yours 2 1/8", okay? Then, grab your border punch and go to town:

Center the square in the punch and punch it, then flip it around to the opposite side, center it, and punch it again. Then do the other two sides the same way:

You'll have some funky little raggedy things on the corners, so clip 'em off (if they were all consistent like this example, you could leave them if you wanted, but these things all come out slightly different):

Voila! You now have a bee-yoo-ti-ful square:

NOW COME THE WARNINGS!!! First, you will end up with a pile of "waste" that looks like this:

so if that will make you cry, or you are in any other way a "paper miser", don't even begin this project! Side note: You can get 36 2" squares out of one sheet of 12"x12" paper, and you need 35 for this project, so it's not as wasteful as it appears, but...

Also, there will be a little strip left in the punch, since you're not doing a continuous border. It looks like this and you will need to remove it EVERY TIME, or it will prevent you from putting the square fully into the punch:

Final tip to ensure success: MAKE SURE THE PAPER IS CENTERED EACH TIME YOU PUNCH!

Okay, I think that's it... I've used this punch a LOT, and have some other fun things you can do with it that I'll share another time, but I have to go to a birthday party now. In parting, here are closeups of the title strip detail, and the dry-erase marker that I covered with matching paper (I also tied and glued a 24" piece of ribbon around the end of it, and tied the other end to one of the hardware things on the back of the frame):