Wish Book

I've been letting this idea float around in my head for a while. Remember the old Sears Wish Book? I remember sitting down with my sister and circling all the things we wanted, using different pens so Mom and Dad would know who wanted what. No possible item was left uncircled, if anything, I was thorough!


Since I'm older, and I haven't seen a Sears Wish Book in ages, my wishes are a bit different now. Some wishes are for items (like the Swim Spa that I've wanted for AGES), some wishes are for other people and some are secret wishes that I'm not ready to share yet. Well these "things" need a place... I wanted a book to paste pictures in and to write so I pulled out a Composition Notebook, painted the spine white and started to pretty it up. My wish book needed to be sturdy and while I love flowers I just didn't think they would last without a protector - so - no flowers.

I had these great bookplates from Basicgrey. They were sitting in my stash just waiting for a project!!

I used my computer to print out my title.

Here's my book. I used the Smitten line from K n Company (love it so much I bought 2 packs), Paper tape also from K n Company, ribbon and one of those Bling shapes from Basicgrey.

Speaking of those Bling Shapes ... I had read a tip about using Low Tack Artist Tape to help put these jewel shapes down. I've had some real battles with the square shapes and was reluctant to buy more. You are supposed to cover the top of the shape with the tape to stabalize it.

I found this to be a paper tape that is stiff but barely sticky. When peeling off the backing of the shape, the paper tape just didn't hold on. Instead of low tack, this was more like "no tack".

I'll probably give it one more try and use a little more "rubbing action" to the jewels. Everyone deserves a second chance - don't you think?

Blog Candy from Basic Grey

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Don't Make my Embossing Mistake

I love the look of embossing! Heat embossing especially. Now, I mostly use clear embossing powder because of the versatility:

1. With pigment ink, my embossing color is chosen by ink color. And I have a big collection of pigment ink.
2. With versamark ink the embossing color is the same as the background paper, another way to save.
3. Again with versamark you can create a resist for inking or using those wonderful glimmer mists.

Now for my mistake:
This is a great tool ..
unless... you use different colors of embossing powder like clear, white and BLACK and don't wash it between colors. I'm not a complete slob, I mean, I wipe it out but that powder just sticks to every stinking surface, up the sides and especially at the spout. My scrap space is in the basement so I avoid running up the stairs at all costs.


This is what you get when you don't wash out the tray
The clear embossing powder jar on the left is brand spankin new and the right one is my mistake.


So why did I buy a new jar when I still had some left? you ask? Well, I used the clear embossing powder with versamark on a dry embossed white cardstock and was wondering why it looked "muddy" when I was done. Thankfully I was using this technique as a resist so it didn't stand out like a neon light, once I sprayed glimmer mist over it. Here's the card I made, you can't really tell, because like a good scrapper, I covered my oops with an embellie (the flower)


See how the white on the left side isn't quite white white?
So my solution is to only use the tray for black embossing powder and use these little plastic containers (that The Angel Company Stamps come in) and keep the powder ready to use. And I labeled each one so I don't confuse white and clear embossing powder.