If you've been sitting on a stash of circle punches — or wondering whether they're even worth owning — this video gives you ten different answers. I walk through ten ways to use punched circles in your paper crafts and junk journals, and each idea branches into variations, so there's genuinely a lot of ground covered. And if you don't own a single circle punch? That's fine too. A geometry compass, a pair of scissors, a jar lid, or a round stencil will get you through everything I show here.
What we cover
Ten distinct uses for punched or hand-cut circles — from simple clustered bookplates and stamped letter titles, to layered flowers, scalloped borders, window pages, circle charms, button embellishments, and wire-and-bead accents. Each idea includes at least one variation, and a few of them (the layered flowers and circle charms especially) open into a whole family of directions.
What you'll learn
How to make circle clusters for bookplates and page embellishments, including:
- Layering circles of different sizes and papers flat onto a surface
- Arranging them in trailing or overlapping formations
- Adding washi tape, paint, stickers, or inked edges to vary the look
- Scaling up to cover an entire journal cover
How to use stamped or stickered letters on individual circles to build titles, including:
- Stamping one letter per circle using alphabet stamps
- Using leftover alphabet stickers (a great way to finally use those half-empty sheets)
- Using rub-on letters for a mixed-media, music-journal feel
- Sizing your circles to the length of your word — longer words need smaller circles
How to highlight part of a stamped image by popping a circle detail off the page, including:
- Stamping the full image twice — once on the base layer, once on separate cardstock — then cutting a circle around the focal detail and mounting it on foam tape
- Stamping three times to layer three separate circle details (face, flowers, shoes, for example)
- Inking the edges of each cut circle so that even circles glued flat appear to lift off the background
How to create circle-based borders, including:
- Using the negative of a circle punch (the punched-out hole left in your paper strip) to make a scalloped or wave border along a page edge
- Punching individual circles in mixed papers and sizes and lining them along a pocket or page edge for a more eclectic look
How to build a patterned background with circles, including:
- Cutting circles from cereal box cardboard, painting each individually, then composing them into a textured collage
- Gluing uniform punched circles in a grid, then painting over the whole surface together for an art-journal background with natural texture breaks
- Covering circles in book pages, music paper, graph paper, or lined paper and arranging them as a multi-surface collage background
How to cut a circle window into a journal page, including:
- Cutting a circle opening by hand or punch and layering the page over a second sheet, leaving a framed view through to what's beneath
- Hiding an imperfect hand-cut circle by gluing a smaller contrasting circle (cereal box, tea-dyed card) inside the opening as a decorative border
- Placing a piece of acetate behind the opening and adding a butterfly or small embellishment to create an actual see-through window element
How to make layered circle flowers, including:
- Stacking four circles of decreasing size and securing with a brad through the centre (or gluing if you don't have brads)
- Using tea-dyed cardstock and inked edges for a botanical, aged look
- Adding a die-cut or decorative element in the centre
- Mounting finished flowers on wire stems to create a small meadow of circle blooms
- Using the layered flower as a tuck spot or journal closure anchor
How to make circle charms, including:
- Punching a circle, setting an eyelet or punching a plain hole, and attaching a bobby pin as a hanger
- Building the charm out further with ribbon, black lace, tags, broken jewellery, and beads
- Making each charm double-sided so both faces are finished
How to make circle button charms, including:
- Removing the shank from a shank button to get a flat back, then gluing or sewing it onto a punched circle
- Using hot glue for speed, or sewing for a cleaner finish (glue has a habit of seeping through buttonholes)
- Layering the button circle over a second, slightly larger circle to give the embellishment depth
How to make wire-and-bead circle embellishments, including:
- Sewing a button to the top circle layer, then threading wire through the button shank loop
- Sliding beads onto the wire tails
- Wrapping wire around the final bead and threading back through it to lock the beads in place
- Trimming the excess wire and adding a small charm to one of the wire ends if you want more detail
Tips & gotchas
You don't need a punch for any of this. A geometry compass gives you a clean drawn circle you can cut out by hand; jar lids and bottle caps give you instant templates; stencil sets with circle shapes work just as well. Hand-cut circles won't be perfectly round, but in most of these projects that barely matters — and layering a smaller contrasting circle inside a slightly-off window cut actually disguises the wobble entirely.
Inking the edges of your circles is one of those small steps that pays back more than it costs. Even when a circle is glued completely flat, a dark inked edge gives the impression that it's sitting above the surface. For the pop-up stamped-image circles it's especially effective — but I'd honestly do it on almost everything in this video.
When you're aligning a cut-out circle detail over a stamped image, take an extra moment to centre it carefully before the glue sets. The whole effect depends on the image below showing cleanly through — a degree or two off and the detail reads as sloppy rather than intentional.
On the button charms: hot glue is quick, but it has a tendency to seep up through buttonholes and leave visible strings or blobs on the front face. Sewing the button on takes about two minutes longer and gives you a much cleaner result, especially when the button is the visual centrepiece of the charm.
For the wire-and-bead embellishments, the trick that stops beads sliding off is to wrap your wire around the last bead, then go back through the bead in the opposite direction and pull tight. Do it twice on each end if the wire is slippery. It's fiddly to show on camera but straightforward once your hands understand the motion.
And if you have half-finished coloring book pages sitting in a drawer — the ones you started during the coloring-book craze and then abandoned because life got in the way — tea dye them before you cut. The dye transforms printed coloring-book paper into something that looks genuinely beautiful and vintage, and circle shapes are one of the nicest ways to use those pages up.
Once you start punching (or cutting, or tracing), it's hard not to find a use for every single one. The leftover negatives become scalloped borders; the offcuts stack into flowers; the tiny scraps get threaded onto wire. Very little goes to waste, and that's exactly the kind of making I like best.
