Great things come in small packages

Brads are one of my favorite embellishments. Okay they are probably my very favorite because they are cheap and you can use them on almost every page.

1. You can decorate embellishments. See the plane?
2. You can add a border with shaped brads. See the snowflakes? 3. Decorate a frame.
4. Separate a word. B*Day
5. Put brad in the center of flowers or to attach other embellishments..i.e. the arrow.
6. Make design elements on your page with the brads. See the circles made with brads?
7. Hang charms on....the & sign. 8. Attach ribbon in a fun way. Oh, and the keys on this page...they're brads too.
9. Decorate a title simply.
10. Make a fun border.

Seriously, brads are probably the second most versatile scrapbooking supply around..paper being the first. Gotta love the little things

Chip off the 'ole Block

Chipboard, I'm still figuring it out. I have tons of it, but sometimes don't have a clue what to do with it. They make letters and images of all sorts of chipboard. Here's a few thing that I've discovered about chipboard. If it's naked, which means there's no color or pattern on it...you can paint it, ink it, stamp it, and glue paper to it. It's very, very versatile and fun to use. 1. Here I painted the green chipboard to add semi-borders to the page.
2. Here I just inked the edge of the arrow chipboard. The arrow is what you would call naked because there is no design on it. I also stamped on the golden yellow circle in the middle of the second page.
3. Here I painted the blue circle, added scallops behind it, and put rub-ons on it along with stickers.....all for the title.
4. Here is where I decoupaged the patterned paper on to my arrow. It's very easy. You glue, you use a exacto knife to cut, and then sand the edges.
5. I also decorated my black airplane with brads.
6. Here I mixed and matched different chipboard alphabet together making a fun title.
7. Here's a picture of what dressed chipboard looks like. See how the title has a design in it already. By the way, I got that chipboard at Target in the $$$ spot.

Wake up and smell the...FLOWERS!

They're not just for girls, and I speak from experience. Check out my collection of flowers before I even had a girl. Okay this was actually only part of my collection of flowers befor eI had a girl. I think I've only bought one bottle since I've had a girl, and...shhhhh....I haven't even used it.

1. This was a kit idea. Take a big flower and cut it in half. I loved it.
2. Use flowers for borders.
3. Use flowers to decorate your own background paper.
4. Use a flower to add oomph to at title.
5. Use flowers to add to journaling.

Also you can stamp on them, paint them, and add rubons to them. You can use them to decorate a frame, a picture, almost anything. Flowers are so fun!!

Stuck on You!

As a little girl, I had a sticker book. I used to love going to the little tiny store in the middle of mall and buy stickers. I still have all my sticker books. So, of course, I still LOVE stickers. I used to be a culprit of the sticker sneeze...you all know...where you just throw the stickers on the page all over just to use them up, but now, I try to strategically place my stickers on my pages to where they will look like they are there for a reason instead of throwing them on.
Here's just a few pages of things that I did with stickers. 1. Here I inked the edges of my stickers and added them in groups of three on the page.
2. I don't normally use big stickers like this, but the Pirate page called for it. It's hard to know where to place the sticker on your page. On this page, I believe that I cut out the whole ship sticker and moved it around until I was ready to adhere it to the page. And then of course the title is also a sticker. Man, that sure made it easy.
3. I know that I read about this in a book or something. Grouping things in threes is a huge PLUS. So I made the squares and then placed three snowmen on them. I also did a little photo corner with snowballs at the top of the main picture.
4. See, once again I did the three thing. This time I simply matted them on a scalloped circle that I had punched out. 5. Man, these stickers here are OLD. But at the time I made this page, I wasn't buying anything new, and was trying to use up some of my stash. I simply added them to my title strip. Oh, and by the way. My word painting are very old letter stickers too. I just added rub-ons on top of them to add the second word of the title.
6. I don't know why, but I really like this page. Maybe it the colors, ore maybe it's the ADORABLE little boy holding the cute little dog. These are my neighbor's dogs, and Luke LOVES dogs. Here I added some dog stickers to the photo mat that I used for the main picture. Easy enough, right? 7. Here I used word stickers to decorate the edge of my picture of Kaleb. He was such a cute little guy.

Ready for Ribbon?

A little ribbon goes a long, long way. I mean, seriously, you buy a roll of it and it will last FOREVER. How many of you have ribbon, but don't know what to do with it? Believe me, you can use it in so many ways. It's sooooo versatile. Here's a few ways that I've used ribbon, but go here for 101 more ideas.

1. You can use it to hold down pictures.

2. You can make a flower with it, just make loops and hold it all together with a brad.

3, You can put ribbon on tags.
4. You can tie ribbon on your main photo or make a border with it.

5. You make a handy dandy frame with it.
6. You can accent a border or fold your ribbon over to make a tassel.
7. You can make tabs on pictures.

Cute as a Button

There are tons of uses for buttons. And they're fun to use. Not to mention, they're cheap. You can get big bags of misc. buttons for a couple bucks at Hobby Lobby. Here's a few things you can do with them.

1. Make a border out of them.
2. Decorate a Christmas tree with them.
3. Add them to the corners of a frame.
4. Add them to emphasize a picture.

5. Use the button as an "o" in your title.

6. Add more color to your page.

7. Add them to the center of your flowers.

8.. Make an entire frame out of them.

9. Make patterned paper background with them. Clear buttons make great bubbles and water accents.

10. Add a little extra oomph to your title or border just to make the page a little more fun.

There is so much you can do with buttons. You can even paint them or put rub-ons on them. I personally don't spend that much time on my embellishments, but it's still fun to do if you have time. Jennifer McGuire is a great scrapbooker/cardmaker who has a great book called 100 things you can with Scrapbook supplies, and oh my word! It's on sale for $6 here. Such a great book with tons of ideas in it. She's also has an article in the magazine Creating Keepsakes every week. She's awesome, and has tons of ideas of how to get the most out of your supplies. And shhh...she actually lives around here in Cincinnati, and teaches classes at Stamp you Art Out over in Kenwood.