Lisa Storms

Hi!  My name is Lisa Storms, and I am a tool addict.  Admitting you have an addiction is the first step, right?  I'm excited it's my turn to share what goes on in this crazy head of mine since you guys just might understand (you know no one else does!).   But before I share a glimpse into my creative world, I should probably start with what inspired it all to begin with, my family.

I live in Oregon with my husband of 12 years, Terry, a total goofball, and our three kids.  Logan is 8, Kaylen is 7, and Owen is 3.  They are all very different, but all very loud!  Unlike everyone else in the house, I am very quiet and introverted.  We just added our first pet to the family, a little Shih Tzu puppy named Holly.  We take advantage of the Great Northwest's beautiful outdoors by hiking and camping during the good months of weather we get, and the rainy season is spent indoors doing home improvement.  We have redone every room in our house at least once!

The first thing we did was covert our dining room into our home office.  My studio isn't like most out there because I keep almost everything white.  White cabinets, white desk, very little décor, and everything is behind cabinets or in white photo boxes.  I am easily distracted and truly need a blank canvas for creativity. 

What I am into right now is texture.  Lots of texture!  And glitter.  And felt.  My favorite tools are Fiskars' punches.  And don't ask me to narrow it down any further than that because that was painful enough!  That's unfair like asking me to pick between my kids, and my favorite will change again tomorrow anyway.  Punches are awesome!  Punch … you're done.  Can't get much easier than that! 

My favorite thing right now to do with punches is creating simple paper piecings … so easy that it feels like cheating.  I decide what I want to make and then gather my punches and figure out how to make it work!  It is a fun creative exercise.  In this layout I wanted to add a large snowflake border on the right side, so I decided to see what fun flakes I could come up with.  No two flakes are supposed to be alike, right? 

For the first flake, I used my trimmer to create eight 1.5" x .5" strips of white cardstock and punched opposing corners with the Chip Off the Ol' Block corner squeeze punch, four in each direction.  I then assembled them on my layout using foam adhesive squares around a crystal gem.  I am really into dimension, so I use a ridiculous amount of foam adhesive on my projects.

My other large flake is simply a pattern of hearts punched with the That's Amore squeeze punch and ¼" Heart hand punch around a crystal gem.  I couldn't resist adding a simple felt scarf border and punching a small photo with the Round 'n Round squeeze punch to replace the "O" in my title.  For a few finishing details, I rounded  my outside corners and added a sprinkling of flakes with the Snowflake pop-up punch.

In my quest for new textures, my latest fun thing is punching leaves.  It's a cool medium with a lot of possibilities.  If you aren't using the leaves right away or want them to last a long time, you'll want to press them.  I know there are fancy presses you can buy or make, but I keep an old phone book (with a heavy box on top) for this very thing. 

I mark the pages with post-it notes and check on them every few days until they are dry.  One thing I've found is as they dry, they will distort if you do not punch with the grain.  They will stretch with the grain, so punch them straight on the leaf if you want them to retain their dimensions.

To create a masculine Valentine's Day card for my husband, I punched eight hearts from a house plant to create a textured border through the center of my design grounded with a frame cut with the Ultra ShapeXpress.  I think it would be so beautiful to have a sprinkling of heart confetti at a wedding (or other shape for any party) punched from leaves. 

And just to show that I really can't help myself, I even attacked some roses we have in our vase right now with a small heart punch.  Wouldn't this be a sweet little touch on Valentine's Day or an unexpected surprise in your garden?

If you've made it this far, thanks for letting me share a little about myself and this fun hobby!  I hope you are inspired to try something new with punches today.

By Lisa Storms