All About Adhesives

When it comes to making something stick, there are thousands of options — literally.

It is imperative that the right adhesive is chosen for the right use. There is nothing worse than a project falling apart after a week, month or year.

Adhesive is not a product to skimp on, either. I know it can be expensive and is not nearly as fun as buying cute paper or pretty ribbon, but it really is vital that you spend the money to get a quality product. After all, what good is it to spend $10 on products for a page only to have them fall apart because you didn’t want to spend an extra quarter on the adhesive?

I put together a list of some of the adhesives you need to have on hand and what types of materials to use each one on in the latest issue of Michigan Scrapbooker Magazine. 

DISCLAIMER: This list is not complete … there are many more quality adhesives available that will work in place of the ones I mentioned. In fact, I have a handful on my desk right now to try and evaluate for a future blog post.

But this list will get you started and will teach you the right type of adhesives for the right project.

Click the link, here, and turn to page 8 … happy gluing!

Storing It All

Storage is an important topic when dealing with paper-crafting supplies.

For me, it is usually the frustration of not being able to find something that leads to a storage solution. Take yesterday, for example, I was looking for Globecraft & Piccolo Real Rust Embossing Powder (one of my favorite colors). I keep them all in an Art Bin “tackle box” storage container so I can transport them easily for classes. The problem comes when I need a certain color and all I can see is a sea of black-lidded jars.

After pulling out about six bottles, my frustration reached the point of no return and I decided I was going to label the jars right then and there. I shoved my project aside, pulled out all of the jars and grabbed some white cardstock and a 1″ punch.

I punched out a bunch of circles, wrote the color name on top and then stuck them through my Xyron machine.

I stuck the labels to the top of the jars and now I can find what I am looking for quickly and easily!

Ah, peace …

This, by the way, is the project I was working on

Click here for a better look and directions on how to make it!

 

 

 

 

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.