Use What U Have/Love What U Use--#1!!

Hello all stamping friends!! Today kicks off a bi-monthly tutorial segment that we're calling "Use What U Have/Love What U Use"! With the way the economy is right now and people's budgets getting squeezed, I thought we could all use some tips and tricks to use "what you have" already in your craft supplies to make "NEW" goodies! I know we all love shopping and buying new stamp goodies(and I'm certainly no different), but I think we're all holding our checkbooks a little tighter right now & most of us have SO much already! So with that, here is my lil' tutorial and tip for the day....

Using Your Punches to Make Photo Corners & Corner Brackets!!

I love using corner brackets on my cards--really frames your image out--and I love making them myself and I just use my punches! Above I have a scalloped square punch--just punch it out and cut it in half and whaddya get= 2 fun corner brackets!!

I have a few of these SU(Fiskars too) Corner Punches and they make such pretty corners. Just punch out on your cs and then place in your trimmer and cut across at an angle. These are especially fun because the cut-out pops up so you can actually slide your cs/image/photo in the pop-up if you want!

I also like to use my border punches (of which we all own at least one of right?)--I just punch my border out on my cs and then use a triangle cut-out template to trace a perfect triangle (whatever size you need) and then cut out on my trimmer. One tip with these is that you need to make sure you center your triangle template over the border where you'd like it so you get a perfect cut-out! So there ya have it---lots of ways to make corner brackets USING WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE!!

Here is a Rubber Romance card I did using my "homemade" corner brackets. Nice touch don't ya think? So try it out and have fun with it!! And in case you don't wanna make them, Spellbinders makes some cool ones too (and yes I have these too)!

hugz,

Suzanne Dean