Thursday, October 25, 2012

Luxury On A Dime


Welcome to another edition of The Cherry On Top,

Today, I would like to talk about embellishments.  I have had a few rare opportunities where I caught an awesome deal or had some kind of budget for a project, but for the most part budget, materials and the environment are often a factor.  I keep a mind for the environment by up-cycling many, many items.  It reduces waste, saves money and keeps your creative mojo flowing.

These pictures I share with you in this entry are cheap/free ways to enhance your layouts and projects.  I hope to give you some tips so that you keep your eye out for the beauty in the rough or a rough that you can smooth out with a bit of finesse, glitter, pearls or paint.




In the first photo, I used a purchased, beige, fabric flower, which actually also doubles for an excellent tutorial on how to make these for myself in any color and fabric of my choosing, there is a cut out and corner rounded, mini card and finally, what is that gold and pearly thing?  A button.  An old button from the thrift store.  I have a huge container filled with awesome buttons.  I use them in a lot of projects.  There are actually 4 other buttons on this very same layout. 2 more like this one and 2 other gold and pearl buttons.

This image is a bit scanty.  The tag is from newly purchased clothes, recycled ribbon and a circle punch, cut in half.  I often cut off the legs or stems of brads and apply with 3D dots.  There are more circle punches, and even punched out flowers, but this layout is pretty much all hand made.  Not purchased.

















Here is a large, pink Eiffel Tower.  LOL!  Maybe not one of the best homemade embellishments, but it just what I wanted for lack of  better artistic skill.  I used the negative space of a paper die cut as a stencil.




In the image to the left there is a  hand made hanger.  I just used some craft wire and fashioned it into a hanger shape, then took some fun thread and wrapped it all around the hanger and painfully tied up a tiny ribbon bow and glue it on.  That simple and super cute!

Actually, that entire project was all handmade and there is a blog dedicated to it further down.



Here is a paper flower all hand made, too.  Just take strips of paper, fold them in half, adhere, then adhere them all to a punched out circle on the top and bottom.  I put the little strands of pearls to keep the look in the project going and added a little panache to this pink petalled  Petunia.















These chipboard shapes, were bought at a steal.  They looked a bit flat and boring though.  So, I pimped them up with some brads and fun threads.

Wow!  Yes, wow!  This tag is one of my all time favourites.  I still can't believe that I made this.  Not only do I love the color, but I took so much care into making it when usually I try to fly through my projects and take short cuts.

Of course, I did not make this bird cage.  Isn't it just gorgeous?  Kaiser Krafts I think?  I cut out an image from a 6x6 paper which is also that of a birdcage and some flowers, then placed the wooden cage on top of it.  Then I meticulously cut out this little part of a flower, from a different 6x6 paper, adhered it to the cage then used pearl paint for the small dots and a little bit of pink glitter glue for some extra bling.  Two different kinds of pink ribbon add more texture and a luxurious feel to the entire tag.

I still love it!  I think I paid less than $4 for two of these cages.

I'm still experimenting with my butterflies.  These are just punched out paper with some different colored glittered and more Pearl Drops.  Awesome stuff, BTW.  Layering up all of this cheap, cheap ribbon and using different textures and colours make it look like you spent more money than what you really did.  I put the glitter all around the edges of the frames and more Pearl Drops for my unending need for bling.  The little tags are just images cut out from 6x6 papers.  Above and below are from Webster's Pages, if you were wondering.




Add poppage to a boring chipboard flower by adding texture and color with this pink...stuff.  I got it as wrapping around some present ages ago. There is another cheapy flower on top of that then a button.  I cut off the fastening rod and just adhered it with a 3D glue dot.  It still needed something.  So, I applied some adhesive pearls around the edges, but I could have used the Pearl Drops, too.







I suppose this tag speaks for itself.  I had a template that I got for free on the internet and printed out.  I cut it out and used it as a stencil on the kind of paper I wanted.  I then cut out some word art from another 6x6 paper and used thick adhesive foam tape to apply it to my tag.  I took glue and ran around the edges of the tag and dazzled on the glitter.  Pow!







This butterfly is a chipboard butterfly from Maya Road.  I used it as a stencil to cut out some pretty paper that I also used on the layout.  I took a copper ink pad and went around the edges, carefully and then rubbed it in with my finger.  I added some adhesive pearls of varying sizes and some more of those handy pearl strands as antennae.  Can you imagine how much you would pay for something like this!?


All of these embellishments to the left are just cut outs from papers or small paper tags that have been reinforced with an underlying piece of paper with a complementive colour.  Then more old buttons for texture, richness and  dimension as well as satiny ribbon to give it even more love.

Wow!  All done for just a few cents, really.

So there are a few ideas you can use to save money and the environment.

No comments:

Post a Comment