Have you been thinking about getting this month’s customer offer but not sure how you’d use the Festive Paper-Piercing Pack? (You get it free when you buy the Ornament Keepsakes stamp set/bundle and the Candlelight Christmas Specialty DSP). There are three different templates that come in the same pack, they co-ordinate with the Window Frames, Labels Collection and of course the Ornament Keepsakes framelits (and by extension, any stamp sets that work with these framelits).

Here’s just one way to use the Ornament Keepsakes template – as a frame for your baubles. You will need a Paper-Piercing Tool (2) and Mat (1) to use with the pack. You can make do with a safety pin and a mouse mat or similar if you don’t already have them or have other priorities for your crafting spend – but I do love the comfortable feel to the new ergonomic tool and the large area of the new mat.

Most of the ornaments in the set have a paper piercing template for both the inside and outside of the shape – all except for two of the smallest ornaments that you see nested inside larger ones in the pic of the templates above (these just have an inner template). I made sure that I chose ornaments that had an outer template to use on this masculine style Christmas card.

The card base is an A6 portrait of Basic Black. I stamped each of my ornament shapes from the Keepsake Ornaments Bundle (W129949 or C129950) onto scraps of Basic Black card using Versamark ink (brushing with the embossing buddy first to reduce speckles), then heat embossed with Silver EP (109131). Each bauble was then die cut out with the matching framelit from the same bundle. After positioning them roughly (without adhesive at this stage) on a Basic Gray mat, the Festive paper piercing template (127857) was used to pierce around each ornament.  The straight edges of the Window Frames Collection template were used (repeatedly in some cases) to pierce the “thread” down from the top edge of the card. After stamping the Petite Pairs sentiment (W122495 or C122497) in the lower right corner in Versamark ink, it was heat embossed with Black EP (109133).  The mat was popped up on dimensionals on the card front (adhering it direct can flatten out the paper piercing and spoil the effect) and then the baubles popped up on more dimensionals and a Basic Rhinestone (119246) used to finish the centre of the largest bauble.

I would usually opt for a light coloured insert when using darker card for my base, however I plan to write my message for this card using the Silver Stampin’ Dazzle marker (128978) and so I stamped another bauble and the other half of the Petite Pairs sentiment directly on the inside with Versamark ink and heat embossed with Silver EP.

I hope that this gives some inspiration for using the paper-piercing templates. If you already have/don’t want the Ornament Keepsakes set then you still purchase the paper piercing templates separately. If I can help you place an order then please email me or give me a call on 0775 1133886.

Pop by our stand tomorrow at the Ross Papercraft Show at Don Valley and I’ll share another idea for using the paper-piercing templates.

Sara xx