Paper laces DIY...

In planning of the invites, I became a lover of the paper pocket folds.  These are interior pocket envelopes that contain an extra flap of paper to paste the invitation to.  But sadly we already purchased all our paper for the previous design.  So I had to determine another way to package the information neatly in the envelopes.  This led me to the ribbon strips, which some girls were calling belly bands, to bind all the invite sheets together...  But I didn't just want a simple ribbon, paper or combo of both strip.  I wanted something that was more interesting.  Mrs. Champagne's bands are cute with the initial card posted on the front.

Mrs. Champagne's belly bands

But I wanted something with just a little more flair.  I determined that I could use the special blades in my rotary cutter to get fun edges on the paper strip.  But that wasn't enough, I also wanted the lace effect that you get via border punches.  This led to a day of looking for sunflower-esque border punches to find the Fiskars Sunburst border punch.

source

From here, I decided to search for the Sunburt punch to see where I could find it the cheapest and I came across a blog for making exactly what I planned to do!  So here is a DIY by Amy at paperlaces on making paper lace with the Fiskars punch.

1.  Amy punches out the border pattern onto her paper (a neutral brown or kraft paper) using the Fiskars border punch.
2.  She then trims the unpunched edge with mini-scallop edge scissors by Fiskars.
3.  The last step involves inking on a little color to give the laces a little dimension.
Here are her finished laces...

4.  Then you glue the laces as you see fit to your projects.

She glued them facing each other or away depending on the project.  They can be layered on top of other strips of paper or put directly onto the project itself.

(All paper lace images are from http://paperlaces.com/paper-lace-with-fiskars-punches/)

I was so inspired by this little online demo that I went out that week to find the border punch.  But sadly all 3 craft stores I visited did not stock the sunburst design I'm in love with.  Anybody else just love little paper crafts and find themselves rushing out to find the tools to make them?