Friday, March 21, 2014

Pink Butterflies Card

This week's theme must be butterflies.  They are one of my favorite elements to include on my cards and it just happens that the cards I've been inspired by had butterflies on them too.




The butterflies were done with Stampin' Up and Martha Stewart punches.  The background is embossed with a folder by Darice.



My rant on punches:
 I learned my lesson on buying Martha Stewart punches.  Never, never take one home until you test it on cardstock.  I no longer purchase her punches.  There are too many on my punch racks that don't work worth spit. 

The small butterfly has to be trimmed by hand.  The shape doesn't punch completely out of the paper and often the interior openings don't punch cleanly either. 

Fiskars is another brand that I no longer purchase.  Their hand held punches don't go across the paper far enough so you have to punch too close to the edge.  Their border punches don't stay sharp very long and even punching through sandpaper or tin foil doesn't sharpen them much.

This pretty much leaves EK Success as the brand I'll buy in the future.  Hobby Lobby carries very few of theirs, but they're still making the ones sold by Stampin' Up.  I've also been using some digital punch images and cutting them on my Cameo. 

With the price of materials and shipping getting so high, and Stampin' Up moving more toward metal dies, digital images may be the future for my paper crafting.

3 comments:

char52 said...

Thanks for your review of punches!

Vickie said...

Linda your card is so pretty. I really like the embossing folder that you used.
Thanks for the info on punches.

okieladybug or okie_ladybug said...

I still would like to get the little Sizzlit butterflies from SU. I love what you do with the cuts from that.