Sharpening your craft punches
/How to sharpen your craft punches.
Are you an old skool papercrafter who uses scissors craft knives and punches? I am. Paper is a fantastic medium for crafting, it's relatively inexpensive and really versatile. But over time it does blunt everything you use to cut it.
I was sharpening a few of my punches this week and thought I'd share what I do in case you are suffering from blunt punch syndrome yourself.
I going to be super English here and use all English terminology, where you live you may call this something else but the photos will help!
What you need is some thick tin foil. The kind you get pies in from the supermarket, or that your takeaway curry comes in. This seems to work much better than regular kitchen foil as I found that can get caught up in the punch.
First throughly wash and dry the tin foil dish - you don't want bits of pastry or curry in your punches!
Cut the crimped edge and then smooth the foil with a bone folder or wooden lolly stick (popsicle stick - that's a translation I do know!)
Now punch away - do a handful with each punch you want to sharpen.
You will now have sharper punches and a load of lovely shiny shapes you can use for your crafting.
Just be careful if your foil is very thick as the edges may be a little bit sharp, with the foil I used mine were fine.
I tried this with a much thicker foil dish that a joint of meat had come in, one of those where you can simply bung it in the oven - no nasty roasting dish to clean afterwards. I found that was a little too thick and most of my punches wouldn't go through it at all, I'm going to use that for some embossing instead I think.
I'm planning to use these shiny shapes on cards, either just glued on as embellishments or in shaker cards - do you have any more brilliant ideas for me?
