Do you know what my favorite part of scrap-booking is? The embellishments! They’re beautiful, three-dimensional and add so much interest! I suppose that after years of scrap-booking it’s not a big surprise that I’ve delved into the world of card making! Specifically this handmade thank you card!
I can’t walk you step by step through making a beautiful card of your own… because I believe any artistic effort is beautiful! Cheesy? Yes! True? Also, yes! What I can do is walk you through my creative process… OK now I sound hoity toity… let’s just get started alright?
My first step is always to gather supplies… if I know I want my project to include blue and teal colors I search through my supplies for anything that meets that criteria. Usually along the way I find one or two specific pieces that inspire what way I want to go with the entire piece.
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That could be a sticker, a flower, a card… whatever it is that makes the whole project POP! If it’s a metal flower I may use more metal accents to compliment the first piece. Get the picture? In this case I fell in love with this little blue and white tag… so in order to complement my tag I used plenty of blue, white and teal accents. Along with little brads like the one I used for the top of my tag!
The second step is to lay out my piece. I start to assemble layers starting with the background paper and finishing with smaller embellishments. This part is so much fun… moving all of the pieces around until they make the most sense! Deciding exactly what embellishment will complete the entire piece!
Once the entire piece is laid out I carefully start on step three: gluing down each piece! Make sure you are always working from the top piece down to the base!
Once all of the big and medium pieces are glued together it’s time to add the final touches. The teeny tiny rhinestones and bits of glitter! It’s easy to go overboard at this point… sometimes less is more. Of course, with glitter sometimes more is more! So that can be very confusing! If you’re not sure if your piece is finished or not walk away for a bit. After a couple hours come back and take a peek… you’ll know if it’s finished or not!
The hard part is knowing when to glue down all of your pieces… the small rhinestones in step three can be added at any point but the small brads? The ribbons and swirls that are tucked behind flowers? Those have to be added in before step three! That’s the challenge of a layered piece… and all of my pieces are layered *wink wink*
Sometimes the multiple layers of embellishments take a bit longer to assemble… but in my opinion it’s completely worth it! No one has ever accused me of being simple… we wouldn’t want them to start now!
Linking up with: Tatertots and Jello
This is so cute – I love the colors you picked for this! Where is your favorite place to buy embellishments for projects like this?
It just depends on what I’m looking for… My favorite product line is My Minds Eye and you can find them at Michaels or Hobby Lobby, my favorite flowers are prima and you can find them just about anywhere crafting supplies are sold… I found bottles of prima flowers on sale at Tuesday Morning for a dollar once when they are usually 10 a bottle!! I love archives for embellishments but really you can find beautiful things everywhere! Sometimes even magazine clippings or packaging tags with pretty embossing is fun to use!
So cute and and easy! We loved having you join us for “Strut Your Stuff Saturday.” Hope to see you again soon! -The Sisters