New ways with the Round Tab punch

Yesterday I showed you the Round Tab punch, used in its simplest form. But you can get so much more out of this punch, as this card shows. 

This is a birthday card for a friend - you could send it to anyone as HB stands for Happy Birthday... but in this case the recipient's initals are HB, too, so it's doubly  relevant. 

I made the initials with the Headline Alphabet set - which is a fantastic investment for scrapbookers. You mount them with two letters on each piece of wood, so they only take up half the space you'd expect. Being left-handed, I find it easier to stamp from the right to the left; it took me a long time to come to this conclusion so I thought I'd save any lefties the thinking time! 

The background is stamped with the little flower from Shapes & Shadows. The greeting comes from Little Hellos, but a "Happy Birthday" stamp from any set would do. 

Stamps: Headline Alphabet (p66), Shapes & Shadows (p54), Little Hellos (p18). 

Cardstock: Whisper White, Tempting Turquoise, Real Red.

Ink: Real Red, Basic Black, Versamark (p82).

Accessories: Corner Rounder punch (p80), Round Tab punch (p80), gingham ribbon - red (p86).

(All page numbers refer to the UK Stampin' Up! Idea Book & Catalogue 2007-2008)

Okay, back to the tab punch... I'm going to try to load several pictures, which never seems to go well for me so please bear with me. I made both the curly brackets and the groovy gothic tab with the tab punch. I confess to being show the curly brackets technique by my Canadian Cousin (CC) but I discovered the gothic tab all by myself! Although I suspect I'm not the first. 

Curly brackets 

1. First punch out the tab from a small piece of cardstock.  Put the tab to one side - it's this leftover piece that you need for the brackets. 

2. Next take the leftover piece and feed it back into the punch. Hold the punch upside down so you can see what you're doing. Adjust the cardstock until just a small piece is showing - you'll see the curly bracket shape. Punch and very carefully remove the sliver of cardstock - it will be quite fragile.

3. This is what you should end up with. It can now be trimmed with scissors to remove the extra pieces and you'll be left with cute curly brackets. Now, how to stick them down? I used SNAIL Adhesive, placing the brackets on a piece of scrap paper, running the adhesive over the top of the bracket and then carefully peeling them off and removing any excess with a fingernail. 

Gothic tab

1. This time it's the tab that you need. Feed it back into the upside-down punch so you can see this shape. You may find it easier to stick the tab lightly onto a piece of scrap paper first.

2. Punch to create this shape which can then be folded to make a gothic tab. 

Well there are some big gaps in between those pictures  but I think they're all there, and in the right order, so I'm not interfering any more!