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Wednesday, December 16, 2009

A Teacher's gift using the Spiral Punch.

Last week Hayden's class said goodbye to the student teacher who had been working in their class for the past few months.  He decided he wanted to give her 'something like that thing we gave Mrs Q' - a decorated notebook and matching pen, so that is what we did.  We used the lovely Haiku papers, and matching So saffron card, and Tangerine Tango ribbon, and made it so that when the notebook is finished it can be easily removed, and a new one put in its place.


We kept the outside simple - with just a jumbo eyelet and bling brad to fancy it up a little.  Instead of a ribbon closure this time we went with a magnetic one (that would be that black thing in the photo above!)

To get the patterned paper to fit nicely to the front of the notebook cover I used the spiral punch along the top.  The only problem with this approach, was that the spirals on the notebook were a lot closer together than the spirals on the punch, as you can see:

So, what to do?  Why, make the spiral punches closer together, that's what!  It may sound fiddly, but is actually really simple.  Firstly I made the paper a little wider than I needed, and then punched it with the spiral punch as usual. I then held the paper over the underside of the punch, and lined it up so that the holes in the punch were halfway between the holes that had already been punched.  I made a mark on the paper where the guide notch on the punch was, and then cut a little square from the corner of the paper.


The next step was easy - simply position the paper in the punch so that the edge of the cut square is against the guide notch, and then punch as usual.  You should be able to see the original holes just to the left of the guide notch.

 
Here is the paper showing you the original holes only, on the left, with the repunched section to the right. 

When you have finished punching the patterned paper, you can match the spiral holes to the spirals on the notebook, and then trim the paper to fit the cover of your notebook perfectly.  Easy!



Make a matching card, and your gift is ready to give.

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