Jul22

Themed Stickers

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Themed Stickers

Three stickers down, seventy zillion more to go!

screen time || noexcusescrapbooking.com

The robot themed stickers from Cosmo Cricket were the starting point for this page, and led to me choosing these photos for the story they could relate. The paper colors and patterns are based on colors found in the sticker set, and the gears were the perfect finishing touch.

Now tell me, does this page look dated or does it look timeless? Do the stickers from 2008 make you cringe, or do they help tell the story? That’s what you should be thinking about when making a page, no matter when the supplies were manufactured or bought.

You know how you’ve got ancient stash? Don’t you think it’s time some of it got used?

Don’t worry about whether or not it’s going to look stylish years from now. I guarantee it won’t, but if you’ve got photos you love, and words that capture your story, how stylish it is won’t matter.

No more hoarding! No more excuses!

Go make pages!

Jul20

Stash Dive

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Stash Dive

I have been creating paper crafts for just about 20 years now. Well, I did do a little stamping before that, but I didn’t really start obsessing over paper crafts till 1997 or 1998. Probably more like 1998, so only 17 years, but still! That’s a long time to be collecting paper crafting supplies.

You want to hear something crazy?

I have never de-stashed. Never. The closest I got to de-stashing was giving away a bin full of scraps last year, and throwing away markers that have given up the ghost. That’s it.

You’d think I’d feel overwhelmed by all the choices and sheer amount of stuff around. But I’m not. All the random stuff is inspirational. Re-discovering old things, and using them up has become a fun challenge, especially since I’ve put myself on a very severely limited craft budget this year.

You know what, let’s spend the next couple weeks digging through my stash, and coming up with fun things to do with it.

There’s tons of wordfetti and vellum quotes and rub-on words that are begging to be used on a page.

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And so many alphas that have barely been used, or partially used, and missing key letters. There’s got to be something I can do with these, right?

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And how about the giant drawer full of ribbons and fibers? Surely these deserve to see the light of day again.

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So many themed stickers! I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t buy these any more, unless I have a specific project I’m going to use them on immediately. But there are still tons of useful things in here. I did use some spring stickers in my PL album recently, but still! There are a lot more to use up!

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And paper. So much paper. I love it. I still want more. But it’s time to use some of it up, don’t you think?

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So do you think I can use these things, and still have pages that look current, or even better, timeless? Let’s see what we come up with!

And you, yes you fellow stash hoarder. Why don’t you play along, and find some ancient things in your stash to use on your pages! Come on, you know it will be fun!

Jul16

Burning Un-love

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Burning Un-love

I was so excited to open up the Hot Boss today. A bit nervous too. I’m a klutz. Getting hurt was definitely an option. Did you know scrapbooking is a dangerous activity? It is, trust me!

Before plugging in the Hot Boss, I did some prep work and taped off an area of a test paper to work on, and covered the desk with the ranger craft mat to protect it from escaping embossing powder and piping hot tools.

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The plan was to doodle a border around the outside of the page. First I spread a layer of embossing powder around the edge of one side of the paper, and then started drawing in the powder with the Hot Boss.

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Not much of a fan so far. The tool didn’t melt the embossing powder very fast, so drawing each shape took forever. Additionally, the embossing powder kept sticking to the end of the tool, making it difficult to see what was actually melting on the page.

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Be careful around this thing, it’s HOT!
After shaking the excess embossing powder back into the jar, I used a heat gun to smooth out the lumps and bumps.

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So far, so meh.

Next I tried the rake tool. That had looked like fun in the videos. Yeah.
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You know what I ended up with? A rake tool covered in embossing powder. Maybe I didn’t let the tool heat up enough. Maybe I used too thick of a layer of embossing powder. Maybe I just need lots of patience and practice.
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The last thing I tried was using the long knife attachment to create dots and lines. That one actually became fun. Because you dip the tip of the attachment into the embossing powder pot, when you pull it out, you can watch the embossing powder melt and start to move. That made it easier to control and work with. The shooting stars are what I created with the knife tip.

Here are all three tips together. I definitely preferred using the knife tip. But, there’s one more thing!
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This!

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What’s that you say? Why that is a bead of embossing powder that dripped off the end of the tool. Just imagine doing that on purpose, on a sheet of parchment paper. Homemade enamel dots! This just put the Hot Boss back in the keep pile.

So what do you think? The Hot Boss seems to have a steep learning curve, but some serious potential. Plus I could always just start learning wood burning, right?

What do think? Do you want to try out this tool, and see what kind of results you get? Do you have this already and love it? Inquiring minds want to know!

Jul13

Free Wheelin’

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Free Wheelin’

Today, we’re going to be looking at the results of finally opening up the Memory Essentials Get Rollin’ package.

What’s inside?

A green-handled, clear wheel with a layer of sticky stuff (that’s the scientific term) covered by a piece of plastic. The plastic acts as a cover to keep random things from sticking to your wheel before you’re ready to use it, much like the covers on the cutting mats for the Cricut or Silhouette.

Once you take off the plastic cover you can add any unmounted stamp you like to the wheel. A not necessarily obvious caveat–you want your stamp surface to be even, so try to choose stamps with similar thicknesses. You wouldn’t want to use a thin rubber stamp with one that’s got a foam cushion on it. You’ll end up with missed spots on your final project.

I started out with a stamp set from Fiskars’ Heidi Grace line, with a single border stamp and a word and flourish. After inking it up well, I rolled the wheel across a piece of smooth white cardstock.

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If you’ll look closely, you’ll see that there’s a definite line where the top layer of ink transfer stopped, and only residual ink made it onto the page. This is a 12×12 page. An 8.5×11 page would probably not run out of ink like this page did.

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I tried again, this time using a pigment ink instead of a dye ink. No appreciable change in transfer clarity, but I definitely was having trouble keeping the wheel straight up and down, and stamping complete images. That’s how I knew it was time to stop making things last night. Another thing done, to minimize that annoying change in ink amount, was to switch the starting sides for each roll of the wheel.

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Finally, this morning I tried with some flower stamps from Close to My Heart, and a tricolor stamp pad from Brilliance. Once again I switched starting sides for each roll of the wheel. There’s a little over lapping here, but all in all, not a bad background.

Any ideas on what to make with any of these papers? Feel free to suggest something in the comments. I think I’m just going to sit here staring at them for awhile.

 

Jul9

Had to Have Tools

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Had to Have Tools

We’ve all got supplies and tools that we had to have when they first came out because they were so exciting and innovative, right? Or is that just me?

Well, I’m ready to own up to some silly purchases of my own. And, perhaps even get them out of their packaging and use them! Wouldn’t that be novel?

There are a few things I bought over the years that I’ve used occasionally. Just enough to know I should probably get rid of them, but I just can’t make myself.


Things like the wide format Cricut that I’ve used a handful of times to make full page die cut overlays and a few titles. It’s gotten more use as a classroom tool than as a scrapbooking tool.


Then there’s the light box for use with dry embossing. It was very helpful for creating my sister’s wedding invites and for looking at slides, but it rarely gets used.


How about the punch anywhere from Fiskars? That was so exciting when it came out. I was going to use it to punch windows in pages all over the place, and then reuse the punched out material too. Except placing the punch where I wanted it was way more finicky than I thought it would be, and the punched out material had punch marks in it. So much for using it on photos!


Another big had to have was the blank stamp roller that you could use with any clear stamp. Dude, that was calling my name. It’s still in the packaging. Never been used.

Same goes for the Hot Boss. Writing in embossing powder? How could I resist? Apparently I should have, since that’s also still unused. It’s so popular, you can’t buy it any more, but check out the video from Adorn-it. It will make you want it too!

So. These things are taking up space in my craft room. While I know I want to hold onto the light box, the punch anywhere punches should probably leave. Jury’s still out on the Cricut. And perhaps it’s time to use those untried tools to see how they work. Yep. That’s what I’ll do!

I’ll make something, and you can tell me if the tools are cool enough to keep. I’m even wondering if the Hot Boss will work in any way similar to the Fuze tool that’s all the rage with the Pocket Life crowd. Check back next week to see what I’ve got!