Monthly Craft Challenge: Scalloped Punch

Heidi at Blued Eyed Blessings had a brilliant idea, a monthly craft challenge. I think this is a great way to get the creative juices flowing and it's not too demanding because you have a whole month to come up with some ideas. I see she's also a former teacher turned stay at home so that must be why I think she's so fabulous! Go over and see all the great ideas, and I'd love it if you all joined in next month too!

I also liked how she chose a tool to feature this month, because they can be quite an investment and I can't wait to see more ideas on how to incorporate them into my crafts and get more bang for my buck! Although, I noticed her punch has a deeper scallop that I'm lovin' so I may have to go and get that one too!

I saw that some of her examples were very similar to things I've done like gift bag tags and decorations for little containers. So I wanted to try and add something different. These are both quick and easy. Here's a simple banner I made for my friend Margaret's step daughter's graduation party last summer. I used purchased tags, you can buy a package for pretty cheap and to me it was worth it for the time saved but you can also cut them out yourself. We'd picked out some paper all from one line so they'd all coordinate and they were double sided so we had twice the options. I used spray adhesive on the tag shapes and laid them down on the paper to attach. Then I cut them out.

I used my punch with a coordinating solid color cardstock and then used my die cut machine to cut out the alphabet out of white cardstock. Buying alphabet stickers would also work and save time. The scalloped punch really gave the banner that extra something, sorry for the grainy quality of the detail picture but I had to crop the only picture I had of it way in to show it better.
I used the red ribbon to tie each one to the brown ribbon we used as a hanger. Ideally, I think the brown hanging ribbon should be behind the tags but I am also sure no one noticed at the party. In fact, I didn't notice until I cropped the photo today!

I think a fun idea would be to make a little tag mini book out of it after the party. All you'd have to do is trace pictures onto the tag shape and adhere to the other side. You could use a post and screw from a post bound scrapbook album to hold it all together and have a fun memento of the graduation party.

The other thing I'm really lovin' that's not too original but I really like and did was make labels for all my scrapbook albums. Been planning on doing it for quite some time and they look so pretty all lined up on my shelves.

Now I don't have to pull them off and open each one until I find what I'm looking for. So simple to do, just print up titles on your word processing program. I made mine with in columns to help print more out on less paper and get them centered nicely. Punch out with scalloped punch and mount on a cardstock circle. Punch hole and add ribbon. Now I can see what's what with a glance.