Make Your Own Embellishments

Hi Everyone!

I hope that you will be as excited about today's tips as I am. I have some embellishments that I picked up at Michaels that were intended for a child to use. They are very cute, but are a little on the flimsy side. Still, I have used them on some children's birthday cards and they have been well-received by adults and children. While I was planning a class the other night, I took one of those embellishments apart to study it. It was made from a lightweight piece of paper, then a pop dot, then another lightweight piece of paper, then a pop dot, and then a tiny cutout. I decided it would be easy to create similar embellishments, but would make mine sturdier than the ones I purchased.

Here's a photograph of a card I made with dinosaur embellishments that I created. I used my paper trimmer to cut some yellow one-inch squares and my blue Marvy Uchida square punch to cut the green ones. I used my Martha Stewart dinosaur punch to create the dinosaurs. I glued a green square to my card. I put a pop dot in the center of the green square and then put the yellow square on the pop dot. I added a pop dot to the center of the yellow square and then put the dinosaur on the pop dot. I was very happy with the results and how easy it was to create that effect.

Then I studied some of the other store-bought embellishments I have in my stash. I discovered that many of them are made by stacking the same shape on top of each other with some foam or pop dots sandwiched between the shapes. So that is what I did on this card. I used my Martha Stewart butterfly punch and punched out 3 "purple" butterflies. I put 2 small pop dots on the first butterfly and then carefully placed a butterfly on top of those dots. I placed a glue dot in the middle of the second butterfly and then pressed a piece of thin folded green jewelry wire on the glue dot to create antennae for the butterfly. I also added 2 small pop dots to that butterfly and then placed a butterfly on those dots. I put some tiny rhinestones along the middle of the top butterfly. I am excited about the way the butterflies turned out and plan to use that same technique with other shapes.

The nice thing about making your own embellishments is that you can create them from that pile of scraps that you are reluctant to toss out. I have a thin clear storage container that is filled with flowers I punch out when I am too tired to be productive and too awake to go to sleep. I've decided to use other paper punches and punch out lots of dinosaurs, butterflies, ducks, etc. so that I can create more embellishments like the ones I described to you today.

If you have any photographs of embellishments, cards, or other papercrafts that you have created that you'd like to share with us, please e-mail them to me, mac3353@aol.com and I will post them on the blog.

Thanks.

Carol