Best Craft Tips
We hope that you will find some useful Craft Tips below from our July/August 2009 Competition entries. Thank you to all contributors
The winning Craft Tip is:
“Get it now. Tomorrow it might be gone.
If it’s on sale, you need it.
Never ask your mother her opinion,
You can always take it back.
If you need it, you deserve it!!”
Craft Tip 1-To prevent word stickers from stretching and breaking when removing them from the adhesive sheet they come on; Try to gently lift only the bottom 1/2 up and slide a scrap of the remnant from double sided tape underneath. Gently press them onto the remnant and lift to remove the whole word up from the sheet. Now place word on desired space on card and press top 1/2 in place, peel remnant from bottom 1/2 of stickers and press onto card. Voila!!
Craft Tip 2 -Always shop with a project in mind otherwise you will buy anything and everything!!
Craft Tip 3-Most rubber stamps are on different sized wooden blocks. When storing them, it sometimes can be a real challenge to get the right configuration to fit the container you store them in. Once you are happy with the arrangement, stamp the images onto a piece of paper that fits in the bottom of the container showing their “home” position (and laminate). That way you will know exactly where each stamp lives!
Craft Tip 4-Stretch your dollars!!! Before using sticker sheets, photocopy the sheet. You can then cut out and ink or chalk the paper phrases to add to your projects.
Craft Tip 5-To keep your work area free of “mess” attach a plastic bag with some tape to the edge of your table. Great!
Craft Tip 6- Don’t throw away any little bits of paper. use your paper punches to punch out a design i.e. flower, hearts etc and keep them in a floss box for the next time you need an embellishment.
Craft Tip 7-To store your clear stamps place them on a piece of acetate and keep them in a plastic sleeve in a folder.
To help keep them in order place the print out of the designs in the front of plastic sleeve
Craft Tip 8-My boys like to draw things like their names in block lettering ,aliens, faces and so on. after they have finished i colour them cut them out and use them for scrap booking. the kids love it , and its something you can show them when they grow up.
Craft Tip 9-When using peel off stickers on cards they are sometimes hard to manage as they stretch or break. I over come this by covering the sticker with clear Magic tape. The sticker peels away with the tape, you can then position it on your project and when happy peel away the tape leaving your sticker in the perfect place.
Craft Tip 10-I also find with a fairly large collection of stamps it is not always easy when making a project to know which one to use, by the time I get them all out and check their size and suitability I either run out of time or inspiration.
I now have scanned all my stamps on the computer and printed them onto paper. now all I have to do is flick through my folder to see what I need in a couple of minutes, I can see what i want and if the size is correct. Now every time I buy a new stamp I stamp on paper in my folder to add to the collection for future reference.
Craft Tip 11-Have you ever been working on a scrapbook page or card that and thought “some thing’s not quite right”. In order to see whether the page/card is well balanced in its layout, turn the work upside down and look again. This tricks the brain into seeing the layout rather than getting distracted by the content. It’s amazing what you can notice this way.
Craft Tip 12-Need to cut thin strips of paper or card?
to keep paper in place use 2 sided sticky tape on your paper and stick to your cutting board this should keep it in place.
this is handy when you only want to cut of a thin strip
Craft Tip 13-Never throw away your old makeup brushes. They can help you add great background dabs for your projects. The old eyelash brush is very different.
Craft Tip 14-To get a reflection of a stamp or mirror image on a card use a piece of acetate. First stamp image on card (preferably smooth card) then stamp image on a piece of acetate flip it over and press it below the stamped image matching details of first stamped image. Colour images below in lighter colours to reflect the image.
Craft Tip 15-When using clear stamps and want to get that 2 stamped effect, ink the opposite side of your stamp and stamp it first, then clean with soapy water and then stamp the other side as normal - this will save you having to buy 2 stamps!
Craft Tip 16-Have confidence in yourself & remember that in scrap booking as with card making whatever you do it is NEVER wrong. It is just different than what you imagined it would be when you started.
You should never admit to anyone that you made a mistake. Because if you do that is what they will remember.
TURN THE NEGATIVE INTO YHE POSITIVE.
Some times the mistake looks better than what you actually intended in the 1st place.
