Friday, February 13, 2015

Punch Art Letters

A few weeks ago I attended Stampin' Up!'s Partytime event in Sydney. Attendee's are encouraged to make a name badge, which I of course left to do like the day before. Not having any current alphabet stamps, or the alphabet thinlets, and not wanting to be as straight forward as write or print my name... I really was scratching my head about how I could make a creative name badge. Then it suddenly occured to me that I have a bit of a rep for my use of punches, so how about making my name by using punches. I got a number of comments about my badge so thought it would be a good idea to show how I made my letters.

My approach was pretty boring in a way - I started with the letter C because it's the first letter in my name...

From past experience I knew I needed to start from the inside and work out. This isn't always necessary but it often makes things much easier.
So I started with the 1 1/4" scallop circle on the edge of a piece of Wisteria Wonder.

I then lined up the 1 3/4" scallop circle around this...

...and punched it out. Looks like a mouth wanting to eat the frosting off a cupcake, hehehehe.

For the A I started by lining up the postage stamp punch from the Little Lables punch pack. The bottom notches of the punch edge are below the edge, but of course this really wouldn't have mattered since I wasn't using the square... might make it a little easier to ensure it's straight though.

Next I lined up the Tree punch around the stamp shape...

...and punched it out.

The R was probably the trickiest of the lot, I realised pretty quickly that I'd have to be piecing together multiple pieces. For the round part at the top of the R, I trimmed a piece of cardstock to a little under 1.9cm and put it into the 3/4" circle from the bottom of the punch so instead of a circle it will just be rounding one end. When doing this I find it easier to fit the cardstock in if it is just a little smaller than the width of the punch shape you are putting the cardstock into.

The diagonal leg of the R was a piece from the Chevron border punch, for the straight back I just trimmed a strip of cardstock to match the width of the chevron. I then fiddled around with the pieces till I figured out how big I wanted the round part and trimmed the pieces to size.

The O was an easy one. Could've gone for a smaller circle for the middle but liked the slightly different look of having the Small Oval on the inside and punching the 1 1/4" circle around it.

When re-doing my letters to take these photos I mistakenly used the 1 3/8" circle, oops!

Making an interesting L was probably the hardest letter of all. After a lot of thinking and a few failed attempts, I settled on punching the Artisan Label to create the inside shape of the L, then off-setting the Curly Label punch...

...and punching it out. I really loved the shape this gave to the ends of the L.

As you can see I tilted the Curly Label punch quite a bit to get the final shape.

Well I hope that has given you some ideas if you ever find yourself stumped with lettering! Also note that I some of these punches are the old "whale" design, any you buy from Stampin' Up! now will not look like this!


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