The Paper Studio's Multi Shaper Punch

I've been hooked on punches lately. Yesterday I'd popped into Hobby Lobby, not even realizing that they had their punches on sale at 50% off. Sadly, they didn't have any Fiskars punches that I was interested in buying. I did see these multi shaper punches from The Paper Studio. I'd passed on these when they were full price. Yes, I can exercise some self-control at times. ;-) I'd also looked for reviews online, but hadn't found any. This is my quick review of this line.

Here's a photo of the punch. This is the Lace punch and the packaging shows that it should punch borders, corners, squares, circles and ovals. That's quite a wallop!


Now the first thing that I noticed, and mind you, I never read the instructions first, is that I couldn't slip my paper into it. Just great, I'm thinking. It's defective. I pick it up to look at it, still not reading the instructions, and I realized that it comes apart. Aha! Okay, that's strange compared to other punches, but I can deal.


The pieces are held together by fairly strong magnets. Those are the four silver dots that you can see on both pieces. I'm a bit dubious now though. I'm not thrilled with the idea of having to constantly pull the punch apart, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

I decide to start easy with a border. Below you'll see that there is a centering mark as well as a couple of raised bars that the edge of the paper will rest against. Oh yeah, and there are those handy border labels in case you're not sure just what that design is for.


Put the paper in place, hold it there, and then plunk the top part of the punch into place. I'm still leery of the process because it seems like there's a lot of potential for stuff to move while things are being manipulated. I forge on. The next photo shows the punch with everything in position.


Press down on the top to punch. It works like a lever. I'll admit it took a bit of force considering that I was only using text weight paper, but it worked.


In the photo above you can see the punched out design after the top part of the punch is removed. Those two extra holes aren't very pretty to look at though, are they. You wouldn't want to use just a single punch out with this particular punch, or I suppose the holes could be embellished with brads or something.


Line up the punched design with the design on the punch. There's a color coded raised symbol to help guide you. And here you can see that when you make multiple punches, those holes will be punched out.


There's my finished border.


I decided to try another one of its tricks and see if I could make the turn for a square. I turn my paper and line up my design with the yellow-orange symbol instead of the pink.


Above you can see the paper is in place and the punch is ready to go.


That's an example of what the corner of the square would look like. I passed on making the complete square.

Speaking of corners though, I wanted to see how the corner punch would turn out.


There are markings on both the right and left sides of the punch for making corners. There are also two marks for lining up your paper. One will insert the paper farther than the other. It just depends on how big a bite out of your corner you want to take.


Up above is the smaller bite. I did a bigger bite, too, but forgot to snap a pic. It was definitely a bigger design and more rounded corner though.

Now I don't do circles and ovals all that much, and when I do I use my Nestabilities dies, so I passed on trying out the circles and ovals right now. What I was more interested in was whether I could punch cardstock. I use cardstock a lot! That's a biggie.


That was my first try at punching a scrap piece of cardstock. Didn't quite get a complete punch and admittedly this is a more complex punch design. I decided to stand up and try again.


Success! And I punched a few more times to make sure it wasn't a fluke. It definitely requires a fair amount of force to get through cardstock though.

I also wanted to point out what else happens....


That's a side view. The top and bottom pieces should be flush against each other. This happened a bit when punching paper, too, but there was definitely more of a gap when I had to apply more pressure to punch the cardstock. What I ended up doing to counteract this was place one hand on that little ledge at the back while the other pressed down on the lever.

So, the multi shaper punch did do the border, square, and corners nicely. I didn't test the circles or ovals. I have a few reservations though. I really didn't like the extra step of having to remove and replace the top part of the punch each time I moved the paper. It was a hassle. I'd rather just position the paper, punch, and move on. I worry about that gap, too, and how well the magnets can actually hold the punch together, and how well the punch will perform over time. I have a number of Fiskars border punches and they've held up well over the years. We'll see what happens with this one.

Speaking of the Fiskars border punches though, I really like this one.


It's called Lacy Days of Summer and I made that my coupon purchase this month at Archiver's. I may not have found the Threading Water border punch anywhere, but I think I like this one even better. :-)