Ribbon Threading Variations

Once again, I resisted spending money on a hole punch because I was convinced that by using Design Studio I could create a .cut file which would achieve the same effect. Many people on the Cricut Message Board have mentioned the Martha Stewart ribbon threading punch lately. It creates a series of slots to thread ribbon through on a card or a scrapbooking layout.

The trickiest thing was getting the size right - here are my first attempts - the holes are a bit too big!



So I went back to work and found the best dimensions for one eighth inch and three eight inch ribbons.



I also created a file for smaller intervals between the holes for the one eighth inch ribbon



I designed this file to avoid the "uncuttable" area on either the baby bug or the expression mat I needed to position the cuts in a way that would result in slightly uneven spacing on a full 12 inch strip of paper. You can compensate by placing the paper a bit to the left as you see here



You can also vary the distance from the edge by moving the paper up or down.

I didn't want my first attempt to go to waste so I tried threading five eighth inch ribbon through the half inch holes on one of my first files - you can use this if you like a more puffy effect. The ribbon in the lower part of this photo was unlabeled but it apparently is a bit wider than three eighths inch so there are smaller gathers at the edges.



These files can be used for cards - simply place the card in the area of the mat where the spacing works for you. Once again there are endless variations!

I designed these using George on the baby bug mat - if you have the Expression they will also work because I set the file up to avoid the slightly larger "uncuttable" area on the Expression mat. You will need the George cart until I get a chance to do some files with Plantin Schoolbook (this time I did George first).

You can also just make your own file by copying these using the Plantin Schoolbook rectangle - check the Shape Properties box on my files for the sizes and placement of the rectangles. Then you can create further variations by changing the spacing as you please.

This file has four pages - each page is labeled to indicate which cut it will make.

Ribbon Threading - George