Monday Media Madness!

Ladies, its time to get into your supplies and pull out some of those great medias that we overlook sometimes. What am I talking about? Paints, chalks, pens, glitter, water colors, embossers, markers, etc. These items can really change the look of your projects. Why settle for flat and boring when a few swipes of a gel pen or chalk can add depth and personality?

Here is a little sample of how a Quickutz 2x2 Scarecrow can change his appearance. In the first photo our little scarecrow is "naked" simply cut and adhered together using the Xyron 150 (available soon at DCRU).
You can see the drastic change when we add stitching made with an black 01 pen.



In photo two I again outlined with straight lines and added a little gel pen in white to highlight our little friend. Finally, we have a fantastic embellishment for any autumn project with the addition of chalks. See how the character takes on a personality all its own?

Lets look at them all side by side to see the complete transformation. I think you might be surprised how much difference there really is.

Now, I know...I know...I cheated and left his eyes "empty". I am the first to admit that I will usually skip those teeny-tiny pieces and simply color them in. This step will take place once I have my little guy in his final destination. But wait...we aren't done yet...

Why stop at just one example? Lets see what we can do with our die cut fonts. In the following examples I'll play with the fabulously fun Quickutz Collector's Edition font...Zelda. We are going to use embossers, glitter, stamping and pens on Zelda.

In our first image we have the basic cuts untouched.

You can see in the second example what embossing with the Cuttlebug Swiss Dots Folder can do to spice up the appearance of an already exciting font.

Next, I ran the letters through the Xyron 150 right side down...adding adhesive to the "face" of the letter. Once peeled off the paper, I sprinkled glitter on each letter. Dust off the extra then run through the Xyron right side up and you've got a great set of sparkly letters that will brighten up any LO or card. (This is one of the easiest ways to apply glitter that I know of.)

Finally, our last example shows a very easy and fun technique using a stamp. Now you can do this a couple of ways, here is how I did it...stamp the image on the paper first and then run it through your die cutting machine. (It is so much easier than trying to stamp individual letters.) Again, I added an outline to the die cuts using a glitter gel pen. The empty spaces on the "n" were just begging for a little something special and were the perfect setting for some rhinestones.


Customizing die cuts is always a lot of fun no matter what you use. So, whether you have a hoard of gel pens or glitter in your scrap stash...drag 'em out and have some fun with them. Keep them handy too...you never know when some of the above mentioned items might show up on our Tuesday Challenge.

Smiles!
Gwen