Sara's Blog

   Normally I try to stay away from anything that’s “super sized”, like fast food! But I love love love these cute Super Sized Brads. Just look at this elegant card LeNae made. Those white flowers are brads! They’re outline brads, so she attached them to red patterned paper and cut around the outside edge so you can see the paper underneath. LeNae tells me it’s easier to do with a craft knife instead of scissors, so I’ll trust her on that one! She also punched black paper circles with a standard size hole punch to make the flower centers. How cute! And since these big brads are painted metal, I bet they’d be fun to distress with sandpaper or StazOn ink.

Okay, this is one Super Sized item I don’t have a problem with!

This week Keith is away in Arizona…and for some reason, his business trips always mean I do marathon crafting sessions. Unfortunately, my tiny workspace has become completely disorganized over the past few months and my New Year’s resolution was (as it is EVERY year) to get things under control. This is a challenge for me because a) I have no time to organize, b) organizing is a chore and c) I’m really good at procrastinating. So this weekend I’m reluctantly sifting, sorting and rearranging my things. Yuck.

But I am excited for one new item in Paper Wishes called Clear the Closet. It’s a hanging closet organizer, which essentially means I can shut the door on my mess! It looks like it could be a solution for my pile of ink pads that threaten to topple over at any moment. The downside? My closet needs to be organized too. (I think I’ll save that for another weekend!)

Any tips on getting organized are very welcome—so feel free to post your organizing success stories here!

I just got a much-anticipated package this week—containing the brand-new Citrus Monograms and Chocolate Monograms. I love them!!! They’re super easy to use: Just punch them out, sand off the nibs with an emery board and you’re ready to go.

Take a look at this cute card Susan made, by matting the “y” and “u” on yellow paper and using a bright yellow flower as the “o”. (You could just sand the edges of the monos really heavily to get a white border if you don’t want to mat.) I love it!

I’m also mad for this fun card LeNae did with the Chocolate Monograms. She mixed her chocolate letter colors (light, dark and white chocolate—get it?) and embellished them with brads and ribbons. This also makes a great design for a guy’s card…I’m always looking for those.

So…chocolate and citrus—and the best part is you get over 250 letters and numbers in each pack, so there’s plenty to play with. I think I’ll grab some chocolate of my own (the edible kind) and start decorating!

    

New Year’s Eve isn’t quite the same when you’re on an airplane. We landed in a very quiet Amsterdam on January 1, amid evidence of enthusiastic New Year’s parties littering the streets. (Apparently they set off fireworks?)

The highlight of my trip had to be a marathon Saturday-night crafting session with my 11-year-old niece Molly. This girl rocks! She made four stamped cards, beaded two pairs of earrings and a necklace, plus we tested out my mom’s inkpad collection (no small feat) and made a list of those that should be tossed or re-inked. We stayed up until nearly 11 o’clock, gabbing, making all kinds of cool stuff and taking occasional breaks for peppermint tea.

One thing she really liked was stamping on a Great Big Brad—you know, those 22mm brads? That led me to think of all the other cool things you can do with these brads, from sanding to inking to adding rub-ons, so I’ve posted a few examples of some altered Great Big Brads here. Enjoy!

Ways to alter a Great Big Brad:

1. Sand: Hold the brad by the legs, then use an emery board to sand the edges or the top of the brad.


2. Rub-ons: Attach the brad to scrap paper, then transfer the rub-on.


3. Double rub-ons: You can apply two rub-ons! Here we transferred the “2-gether” image toward the bottom of the brad, then added “sweet” slightly overlapping.


4. Paint: A quick swipe with cream acrylic paint gives this silver brad a shabby chic look (it looks great as the center of a silk flower!). Simply hold the brad by the prongs and lightly swipe acrylic paint around the edges using a foam brush or cosmetic wedge. Let dry, then attach to paper or flower.


5. Punched paper: A 3/4" circle punch perfectly fits a 22mm brad. Simply punch the paper and glue it to the top of the brad with any type of adhesive. (Glue stick works just fine.) Want more dimension? Ink the edges of the circle and/or the brad.


6. Stamp It: Insert the brad into a scrap paper, then stamp a letter, small word or even a portion of a larger image with a Staz-On inkpad.


7. Punched and penwork: Punch a 3/4” circle of paper, add a doodled border and glue to the brad.


8. Flower centers: A big brad looks great in the center of a silk flower! The brad and flower were both stamped with Staz-On.