Day 207 (January 26th, 2011)
Title: Sparkle
Secrets of Scrapbooking: Sparkle!
The most dangerous of all embellishments - Sparkle! Of course, by "dangerous", I mean is the one embellishment that you need to be careful of using, because overusing it can take away from the overall idea of your project instead of enhancing it. A sparkle element can be used in just about any aspect of a project (you can add sparkle via ribbon, embellishments, glitter, gel inks with glitter, embossing powders, and so much more), but the real "trick" is to use just enough sparkle to enhance the theme of your project, and not look like a disco-ball (unless, of course, your theme is 'Disco Ball').
Sparkle elements remind me of a product they used to sell years ago called the "BeDazzler" - it was basically a stapler for rhinestones. You could attached rhinestones to just about anything; fabric, shirts, pants, the wall, the cat, anything. In the commercial for the BeDazzler, you would see these kids using it to add approximately 2.8 trillion rhinestones on to a pair of pants before wearing them outside and causing traffic accidents (okay, they didn't cause accidents - but the pants sure looked like an accident). This is one of those examples, where a little sparkle would have gone a lone way.
In these project, a sparkly butterfly was attached to a birthday card. The butterfly had glitter and two rhinestones on it to add a great sparkle element. Even the metal antennae add a somewhat sparkly feel as well (although its more of a metallic element than a sparkly one).
I hope you enjoyed this weeks "Secrets of Scrapbooking", and I'm sure I'll do some more scrap-focused weeks in the future!
Enjoy
