Thursday, September 18, 2008

Punch some paper!

Yes, paper!

Here's the whole story....


Our favorite babysitter was here last week and brought with her a "punch" that makes little envelope templates. And, when I say "little", I mean little.



The girls were enchanted with this and had a little pile of envelopes on their desks when I returned home. I asked our sitter where she'd found the nifty little punch and she said "Big Lots" and that she'd just gotten it recently. Hmmmmm.

So, yes, you guessed it, we headed to Big Lots to see if we could find a punch for the girls. A new hobby, yay! We left Big Lots without the envelope punch as none were to be found, but instead with some even smaller punches in a variety of shapes. The girls have been punchin' ever since. I sat down w/each of them and gave them a few ideas on how they could make cards using the punches and that was all they needed - every day I hear "may I use the punches?" from each of them, Mr. E too (we found some cool boy punches with a train, car, helicopter and airplane).



I found the large punch for the tiny envelope a few days later when I ran to Michael's to take care of a promise I'd made Mr. E (he'd noticed my Bible has a ribbon in it to mark my place...but his Bible didn't. I told him we could make one for his Bible...that was about 3 weeks ago...I kept forgetting to get some black ribbon! So, when I remembered it last Sat. evening, right at bedtime, mind you, CKB said "GO" and he put everyone to bed so I could fulfill my promise to our little guy who wanted his Bible to be like Mama and Daddy's :) Thanks for putting everyone to bed that night CKB! It meant so much to Mr. E when he saw the ribbon bookmark in his Bible Sunday morning!). So...while at Michael's getting black ribbon, I looked at their scrapbooking supplies and found a punch for envelopes - yay - there was only one left though and it was a bit pricey so I left it there. The next day there was a coupon for 50% off one item in the Sunday ad....yes, you guessed it, we stopped by Michael's on the way home that afternoon and thankfully the one envelope punch was still there! :)

Here are a few examples of their handiwork thus far. (the one in the middle was an "example" I made for them just to get them started on making cards)



Mom note: The vacuum DOES pick up all these little gems off the carpet easily. You need to know this because they WILL get everywhere! (the pieces they punch out, not the envelopes!)





Below is what the envelope looks like when first punched - the punch is great for the girls because it crimps the folds for them - makes lining things up much easier for them!

4 comments:

Latane Barton said...

I want a big one like that!! I just got a gadget called a Cricut (cricket) that cuts all sorts of things and cost way too much money. What was I thinking? When I have time to do some work with it I will post it on my blog.

I know the children loved making all sorts of shapes. It's so good for them to have projects. You sound like the best Mom around!!

Lok said...

Aw, now, this is a great idea! Thanks so much for posting it. I never would have thought to pick those up, because I just see them as scrapbooking tools. I will so keep my eye out for sales at Michael's. Ooooh - Santa Claus may have just been given some ideas. Yay you!

CAB said...

I am looking forward to seeing what the Cricut can do!

Best Mom around? Hardly :) I try though!

CAB said...

LOK -

Do y'all have Big Lots? If so, try there for the small punches in the stationery section - the ones in the blog post were $1.00 each. I saw smallish ones that were just a tad larger than those over at Michael's and they were $8/$9 a piece! Yikes!