MTL Blog

Ok, I know many of you out there love new and easy storage ideas, so here is another one.  We were recently looking through some blogs for different designers at some of the big companies and we came across this great idea.

Gather all your flowers together and pop them in a glass bowl or vase.  Try to use one that has a large opening, this makes it easier when fishing around in it looking for the flower you are after.  Pop the bowl on your scrap table or on a shelf, it will add colour to the room and having them in view will prompt you to use them as well.  I always find if an embellishment is out of sight it’s out of mind, at least until you’re cleaning up and come across it again.

If pick up this nice bowl at my local House to Home store, but any home shop or discount store should sell them.

For those of you that subscribe to or purchase Scrapbooking Creations magazine you may have recently seen our staff member Larissa in the Hot Tips section.  I thought it was a great tip and thought I’d share it with you.

If you can’t find the right colour flowers to match your layout, try colouring them yourself.  Coloursprays or Glimmer Mist are perfect for this.  If you want a strong colour, set up a spray booth using a pizza box and simply spray them from a distance.  If you want a more subtle colour, try diluting the colourspray with a little water in a container and immersing the flower until it changes colour, then set it aside to dry.  Once the flower is dry you could even dip the flower’s edges in undiluted colourspray for a two-tone effect.

Previously I told you about Ikea’s spice racks and how I store my small flowers and buttons in them using the spice jars.  When one of our customers Isabelle read this, she emailed me to let us know that she uses the same spice rack to store all her medium and large rolls of ribbon.  They fit nicely into the rack and you can let the ends dangle down though the gap.  This is a great idea – thanks Isabelle.  Another way to store your ribbons that are on rolls,  is to put up a small piece of curtain rod, I have this resting on two normal curtain rod holders, your ribbons are then easy to see and can be easily pulled off the roll and cut to any length.

If anyone has a good tip for a storage or anything else drop us an email so we can share it with everyone.

We recently ran a class where we painted some chipboard using Jo Sonja’s Burnished Copper Micaceous Pigment mix paint, which gives a metallic finish.  Once the paint was dry we then covered the chipboard with Glossy Accents/Dimensional Magic, we discovered that as the Glossy Accents dried the chipboard turned from the Burnished Copper colour to a green/blue colour which we think is due to oxidization.

Through trial and error we discovered that if you paint your chipboard, let it dry, then seal the paint with Mod Podge, you can then cover it all with Glossy Accents and the oxidization will not occur.  Thus allowing the original paint colour to show through.

We hope this little tip will help when using this or any other Metal based paint.

We all have our favourite manual cutting machine whether it be the Cuttlebug or Bigshot machine, however, we are sometimes unsure just how well they interact with each other.  I personally have the old original red sizzix machine, which I must say never gets used any more, and I also own a Cuttlebug which I absolutely love.  It’s easy to use and I can still use all my older sizzix dies in it.

However, Sizzix recently brought out a new range of dies called Bigz and Bigz XL dies. While the dies fit though the Cuttlebug machine without any problem, the acrylic matts don’t.  I found this frustrating as there are some really lovely Bigz dies on the market.  Well we had a lightbulb go off whilst playing in our workshop last week !!!

You can use the Bigz and Bigz XL dies with the Cuttlebug B plates instead of the Bigshot mats. The process is still the same – sandwich the die (rubber-side up) with your paper/cardstock between the two B plates as normal and whack it through the machine. Voila – goes through with no problem. The only “limitation” is with the Bigz XL dies – and this is because the B plates are not long enough to cover the whole die – so it works best with designs that have more than 1 shape on them eg. Album dies, tags, invitations.  Just place your paper over the shape that you want to cut first and then place your acrylic matt over this area and roll through as usual.  The rest of the die not covered by the acrylic matt will just roll through as normal.  It might take a little longer, however, if it’s a die you really love and don’t want to buy an extra machine just to use these dies, here is your answer. Enjoy !

BRADS, these pesky little things are hard to store.  You either need a million little containers – one for each colour group – or you have them all in together and it becomes impossible to find the colour you need.

While chatting at work  Anne came up with a great idea – TEST TUBES – so while I was on ebay I typed in test tubes and found this great test tube caddy.  All the test tubes came in a metal stand and all filled with bubble bath and have screw on lids.  So now do I not only have a great stand for all my brads but I got to have numerous relaxing bubble baths.  It was a win, win situation.

Ikea has endless storage ideas for scrapbookers looking to make their scrap space more efficient.  I’ve attached photos of two of my favourites storage ideas  from the Ikea kitchen range.  I store my small and medium flowers and buttons in spice jars and hang all my rub-ons and chipboard off these utensile rails.  Both items were inexpensive and get my supplies up off my desk allowing me to spread out the pages or projects I’m working on.