The perfect set of embellishments

What would be the perfect set of embellishments?

I love co-ordinating ranges of paper - at the moment I'm keen on Basic Grey Periphery, Basic Grey Fusion, K'ology Addison, and DCWV Once Upon a Time. These ranges make it so much easier to choose elements for layouts by being able to use matching papers and embellishments.

I used to get a Club Scrap kit every month. It came with a selection of co-ordinating papers - well, all at cardstock-weight in fact, beautiful quality - plus a matching alpha sticker set, photo mats and cut-outs or stencils. That was just the Junior kit - there are extra embellishments available such as fibres and buttons.

I'm packing for a weekend crop, and I don't want to have to make up page kits - or alternatively take everything I own! - so I thought of taking a selection of matching paper, cardstock and embellishments. Now I have some embellishments to go with the paper ranges I mention. But what would be the ideal collection? I can even create some with my Craft Robo before I go (the ones marked ** in the list below), if I have time. Can you add anything to my list of suggestions?

• Prima flowers
• Ribbons & fibres
• Buttons
• Gems
• Paper frills **
• Brads
• Large flowers **
• Alphabets **
• Frames **
• Photo turns **
• Flourishes and corners **
• Quotation marks, brackets, washers, arrows **
• Tags **
• Journalling blocks **
• Circles (to layer and add words or journalling) **
• Autumn leaves flourish stamps!!!
• Rubons

Ways to add journalling

Anyone who wants inspiration about where to put journalling on your page could do worse than check out the online gallery of your choice. While not all LOs have journalling, there are many and varied ways that other people have added journalling.

Here are five of my favourite ways;

Tags are definitely a favourite: I use them on the LO both visible and hidden, often several tags tucked behind a photo.
Cutting out the words of a short amount of journalling separately makes an attractive feature


Here's a simple journalling block - position it like an extra photograph.


I have printed journalling on transparencies or vellum - this one is attached with brads


Here I've made a feature of the journalling by printing and then cutting out an appropriate design.

No longer around (step by step)

When I saw Becky Fleck’s August RoundMaps I knew I wanted to try out the round format for a LO.

So obviously – “round” became a theme. What pictures did I have with something round in them? I was immediately reminded of my guinea pig, Button, now no longer around (!), but whom I miss when I’m chopping (usually round!) vegetables. He had a round white crest on the top of his head.

I haven’t got very good pictures of him – the rest of him was black so contrast was always a problem – and guinea pigs aren’t good at keeping still for the camera! But nonetheless I wanted to scrap my feelings about how surprisingly much I miss him and his brother Blaze.

So this time – I just started with “I miss …” and continued to write down how I felt.

I miss our guinea pigs Blaze and Button most when I am chopping up vegetables for cooking. I used to put the cauliflower leaves and the broccoli stalks to one side for the piggies. They did love their veg. We even bought organic carrots so the pesticides wouldn’t harm them. I miss their squeaks in the morning too. They used to recognize the noise of the kettle going on and start squeaking madly for their breakfast vegetables.

For the second LO I used the same sketch, but I used my experience from the first one. Firstly I chose less brightly coloured papers because in the Piggie LO I thought the colours distracted attention from the photo. I also picked papers that continued the circle theme.

This time I used a photograph of arches – again that circular motif. And in my journalling I asked the question: what was significant about those arches?

Andy Goldsworthy’s Arches were a feature at his exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. J and I have been interested in Goldsworthy’s work for some time and Easter Monday 2007 was an opportunity to actually see many pieces (although we couldn’t photograph most of them because photos of the pieces are also his art). The [others in our party] enjoyed it too.

Those LOs I did the other day

Just to prove I DO sometimes scrap! A Cathy Zielske scraplift and a Scrappers Unlimited class.
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