Simply Stickers

When I was a child, I had a sticker collection. I kept them in one of those spiral-bound, magnetic photo albums and loved the opportunity to trade and add to my collection. It was all the rage in the early 80s and even though times changed and I outgrew my collection, I never seemed to outgrow stickers. In fact, they were one of the things that drew me to scrapbooking in the first place.

These days, my friends rarely use stickers in their scrapbooks. They prefer die cuts or flowers or buttons or just about anything except stickers. I understand where they are coming from. In the early 90s we all sprinkled our pages with tiny Mrs. Grossman’s stickers — a look one of my friends refers to as a sticker sneeze. Like a sneeze where tiny droplets go everywhere, we covered our pages with tiny cartoon butterflies in colors nature never intended. It’s a look that is not only out of style, but never had any basis in art whatsoever. There was no place to rest your eye; no focal point; no triangle — just an odd mix of photos and tiny stickers.

So, I understand why many of my friends cringe at the word sticker.

But, given the right style, the right attention and the right design, stickers can still participate in amazing scrapbook pages.

 

On this page, I used stickers for the title, as a journaling block, and as accents. They, along with the plaid and denim papers, are all made by Simple Stories and are part of their Summer Fresh line. I love this line and have used it on many projects and pages so far. It reminds me of days gone by when life was slower and simpler. And I love the color palate — yellow, red, denim, blue and green.

 

Here, I used a sticker border on the edge of the denim paper for a unique look. I love that they match perfectly — something not all companies can achieve. I also added a few word stickers to fill in a blank space.

Here’s another look at the border … the scallop is the sticker, the plain denim is paper. Simple Stories includes several fonts on their letter sticker sheet. I used two of them for the title.

The flowers and jars are also stickers.

 

And, since I like to alter everything, I used my Cricut to create labels for the jars after my husband made the pickles. Here’s a better photo:

 

I used the Preserves cartridge to make the labels both for the lids and the jars. The word pickles uses the Opposite Attracts font and I used my Gypsy to weld the letters together into a word. I used my Xyron to turn the words into stickers and adhered them to the labels.

Finding an adhesive that would stick to the jars was challenging, since they are not smooth. However, Glue Lines by Glue Dots seemed to do the job just fine.

 

Storage Tips — Ribbon & Fibers

Aside from the hobby itself, scrapbookers share one huge problem — how do you store it?

There was a time when I fit most of what I owned in a bag or two that traveled from location to location.

Then I discovered rubber stamps, ribbon, brads, chipboard, ink, paint and other “supplies.” They started coming in bigger packages and I found myself only using a portion of whatever it was on a project, which left a lot for storage.

I have been scrapbooking for about 15 years. Over that time I have witnessed many trends come and go and each one has had its own unique storage issues. Needless to say, I have wasted a lot of money on storage items. Some were perfect for travel, but didn’t work at home. Others took too long to open and close or too much space or just didn’t work the way I thought they would.

Whether you are new to scrapbooking or have been around a while, you can always learn from another’s storage systems. Every time I find a magazine or blog with storage ideas, I always pay close attention. I still have products that I have yet to find the perfect way to store. But, I have others that I have been using for some time that I think work pretty well.

Of course, no solution is right for everyone. Just like there is no right or wrong way to scrapbook, there is no right or wrong way to store things. It all depends on the space you have, the products you use most often, the way you crop and the way you think. For instance, some products I forget all about unless I have them in view. Others I keep out because I like the way they look. And, there are some that can be out of sight, but never out of mind and I don’t mind moving mountains to find them when I need them.

Anyhow, I thought I would share a few of my success stories, starting with ribbon and fibers.

I generally buy ribbon by the yard, so storing it in canning jars is a great solution. I love how it looks on the shelf, it’s easy to access, I can see what I have and it costs less than $20!

I also love buying the mini spools of American Crafts ribbon. They sell for about $1 a spool and always have coordinating colors and patterns. I like looking at them, so I keep them in a Kaiser Craft storage bin I made. But, once open, the ribbon doesn’t stay nicely attached to the spool and it seems silly to unspool it, rewrap it and put it in a jar.

My solution? Removeable Glue Dots! Place one at the end of the cut ribbon and attach it. It easily peels off with no residue. I suppose it would work if you keep your ribbon on a card, too.

I keep my fibers on embroidery/cross-stitch cards. Many of them are leftovers from a previous hobby. Others were purchased when such things were available and placed on cards made by Cropper Hopper. I keep them all in a box by Cropper Hopper. It has space on the reverse side for other items and has a handle, which makes it easy to carry to crops.