Simple Trick: How to Make Symmetrical Corner Cuts
Some of the toughest challenges can be solved by the simplest of solutions.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
We made some pretty fancy tags the other day, but even simple tags seem to be extremely popular with artists these days. They are sold by the fistful to become part of all kinds of projects.
And they are really simple things to make yourself - out of any paper you have around, or Ultrasuede, or even aluminum, and you can make them in any size you want.
Really simple except for one little thing, that is . . . the corners.
Nobody likes to “cut corners” in their work and it’s probably because making them match is just about impossible - by the eyeball method anyway.
Luckily, there is a very simple trick for getting this right every time.
Start with a nice, straight rectangle cut with your paper trimmer.
Using a scissors, cut off the left corner at an arbitrary angle. This first corner cut can be any size and slant you please.
Flip the cut-off corner over left to right (don’t rotate it) and align it with the right corner. I changed its color to indicate that the backside would now be up.
Hold it in place and cut along its edge to get a matching slant on the right “shoulder” of the tag.
Punch a hole, add an eyelet and loop of string and you are in the tag business!
NOTE:
If you need to make many tags that match, use this method to make a template out of cardstock that you can then trace.
All done . . . can’t get much easier than that!
