My most-used DIY tools for papercrafting cardmaking scrapbooking

Years ago I ran a swap on Stampin' Connection to create punch samplers. It helps to see which shape will best fit the stamped image I want to use and vice versa.  I LOVE this thing and I highly recommend you make yourself one.  Since mine was assembled by collecting the punched pieces of card stock (CS) from many different people, it is a mish-mash of colors.  We used 3"x3" pieces of CS (you get 16 from a single 12"x12" sheet), punched out and labeled the square with the name of the punch.  To get them all on a ring, punch a 1/8" hole in the same spot on each piece (or do what I did and use this project as an excuse to acquire a Bind-It-All!!)    Recently, I added the smaller die cuts I have to the ring as well as some of the actual punched shapes.  I seem to take those off the ring to see how they look layered or on a card, so not sure if they will eventually have a ring of their own or something else.

Since I use the punch sampler all the time, I thought it might be useful to have a sampler for my embossing folders, too.  I used 8.5"x11" cardstock this time, and cut each piece into 16.  That keeps the sampler reasonably small, while still giving me a quarter of a card front worth of each texture.  Running every EF I own through the Big Shot didn't take as long as I thought it would, and I love the result.  Really helpful to decide which texture is the best fit for a given card, and I use EFs on almost every project.

Hope this inspires you to make yourself some tools!

Happy Crafting!