Scrapbooking Supplies for Advanced Crafters

If you haven’t already stocked up on a number of neato embellishments, then now is a great time to do so.  Especially if you have a craft book with ideas galore and are more than ready to implement them.  There are a lot of different embellishments out there, some more obscure than others, but here are several that you’re most likely to use.

Buttons.  Sure they’re made for fastening, but they can also be used in unique ways for scrapbook pages.  You can break out that old jar of buttons you’ve been collecting over the years, or you can go to your craft store and buy buttons that are specifically made for crafting.  Make borders, place them on corners, get creative.  They’re buttons!

Brads.  Brads come in different shapes and colors.  They’re a cute and effective way of fastening pieces of paper together all while adding a bit of color or shine to the page.  Simple to use and one little bottle will last forever.

Glitter.  True, it gets everywhere – especially the really fine stuff – but when something calls for sparkle, shine, and pixie dust, nothing will work better than glitter.

Ribbon.  There are so many different sizes, styles, colors, and patterns of ribbon available you may feel like a kid in a candy shop when trying to decide.  Consider which pieces might detract too much from your page and which colors will mesh the best with what you’ve got going on.  Or if you just want to be downright crazy, then go for it!  After all, it’s your scrapbook page.

Eyelets.  These are nifty little rascals that demand a set of tools in order to get them into the paper properly.  Similar to brads in their function, eyelets give you a little hole in the page circled by colorful and/or shiny metal.  They’re great on their own or you can use them in conjunction with other embellishments.  Don’t want regular ole eyelets?  Check out the shaped ones – from fall leaves to music notes, you’re sure to find something that works for your page.

Ever grabbed a greeting card and wondered how cool it would be if you could make raised letters on your pages?  Embossing tools allow you to do exactly that, and it’s not as hard as you might have thought.  It can be a bit tricky at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be an embossing machine in no time.

First you’ll need ink for stamping.  Next, emboss powder.  You can get the powder in various forms; clear, black, gold, white, and so forth.  The choice is yours on whether you want to do a clear ink with a colored emboss powder or if you want a colored ink with clear emboss powder.  Then you’ll need a heat tool.  The idea is simple; stamp an image, cover the image with embossing powder, heat it up, and then let it cool down.  Voila.  A raised image.

Embossing is really great when you want to have an image that pops out a little or has some texture to it.  Want a Christmas tree with snowy branches?  Use clear ink and silver or iridescent emboss powder.  The possibilities are endless and always a lot of fun.

There are a lot of die cutting machines out on the market.  You may have seen the Cricut on the Home Shopping Network or QVC.  I purchased a Cuttlebug for my mother a few years ago.  Die cutting machines can do two things for you.  They can cut out images for you (saving you the time and care of scissors) or they can make raised images by pressing the paper in just the right way.  Getting cut out images makes life easier because you don’t have to wing it with the scissors and you don’t have to go out a buy a bunch of different punches.  Textured paper gives things a bit of added pop that you can use on whole sheets, for a border, and more.

You’ll need a die cutting machine in order to do anything at all, but after that initial purchase, it’s just a matter of choosing the die sets (for cutting) and the embossing folders (for texture) that you want.  If you want to save cash, it’s a good idea to choose images and patterns that you know you’re going to use over and over rather than something you may only use once.  Luckily, there’s a wide range of goodies to choose from, made by the same company that crafted your die cutting machine.

Whatever tools you finally decide to use, be sure to use them often so you don't feel like you're throwing your money away.  However, if you love scrapbooking and you've made it this far, there's a pretty good chance you're going to have a blast as you continue to craft your memories into a fun and colorful embrace!