Quick Tip Tuesday–Fantabulous Cricut Blog

Good morning crafty friends! As you may know, I am on the Design Team for the Fantabulous Cricut Challenge Blog but I also write the Quick Tip post there every Tuesday. You can go back to see all of my Quick Tip posts HERE! But today I decided to also posts my tips here on my blog. For the month of May I will be sharing crafting tips AND organizing tips each week. This week we’ll talk about brads and eyelets.

If you are anything like me, you are always looking for new ways to organize your stash of scrapping supplies. I remember when I started this journey many years ago, my entire stash fit into a small 8” x 10” container, LOL, but today not only do I have an entire craft room but supplies from that room have somehow started overflowing into others rooms! (No, really, I have NO IDEA how that happened!!!)

So my first quick tip has to do with brads and eyelets. Yes, I think we all still have them in our stash whether you want to admit it or not! I personally like to keep my brads and eyelets in containers that I can grab and go. So I separate mine by color (or color family) and put them in those little Tic Tac containers then those go into a slightly bigger clear box. I have one clear box for big brads and one that contains mini brads. I use this same system for my eyelets.

If I’m going to a crop, I can just grab the box that I want or just take a few of the smaller boxes containing the colors and/or sizes that I need.

And speaking of brads, did you know that you can take plain silver or gold brads and change them to any color that you want? Well, as long as you have some different colored embossing powders and VersaMark!

First, take your plain brad and dip it into your VersaMark pad.

Next dip it into your color of choice of embossing powder.

Now heat your brad with a heat gun. Make sure you use a pair of crafting tweezers to do this last step! After it’s heated, you can dip it again into the embossing powder while it’s still hot and heat it again to create a thicker coating.

Now you have a brad with a custom color! Try experimenting with different colors of embossing powders.

Here are a few different colors that I tried. I used Platinum, Interference Blue, and Green.

How do you store your brads and eyelets? Comment below and share your storage solutions. Next week I’ll be back with another organizing and crafting tip.

Tomorrow I’ll have another Mother’s Day card to share. It was made using another tutorial from Split Coast Stampers so please be sure to stop by! Thanks!

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

New From Jetmax!

Well, new to me at least! I am really into the whole Jetmax storage cubes right now – this better not be a fade ‘cause I’ve spent way too much on them so it better last! - and I’ve been searching for the one piece that I can never find – the file cube with only one drawer. Well, after teaching my SDU class tonight, I went to the Jetmax section and there it was! I felt like I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow or hit the Jetmax cube lottery! As I was grabbing my cube, I saw something that I had never seen before. A Jetmax Cricut storage organizer!

You can store your Cricut machine in this. And that’s an Cricut Expression on the box so it’s big enough for that. (Please excuse these photos, I took them with my phone.)

A closer look. Now, I like the place at the very top for the Cricut markers (I don’t have many of those anyway) and the little shelf at the back, but for storing Cricut boxes like they have done here – please, don’t make me laugh! That little space wouldn’t hold any of my cartridges! – does anyone really have only have THREE cartridges? – I guess I could use that area to store my Gypsy stuff.

Here’s a photo of it closed:

Nice, but I think that I use my Cricut too much to have to open this over and over again. – I may have to eat my words if you come by my house in a few weeks and see one of these in my scrapbook room! - But I do love that they are making more types of storage and also thinking about us Cricuteers! Thank you Jetmax! It costs $59.99 at Michaels but you can always use a coupon and my Mike’s only had 2 in stock.

Just thought I’d share. Michaels is redoing their entire scrapbooking department and I am told that there are a lot of new items coming soon. I’m looking forward to seeing new scrapbooking products and I hope they won’t disappoint. I’ll keep you posted!

PS – here’s a coupon, just in case!

Until next time, Happy Crafting,

Control Those Ink Pads!!!

In the process of redoing my craft room I realized that I had WAY too many ink pads –not that I’m complaining, mind you- and I didn’t have any kind of plan to tame my growing collection. Until I found these two tips. The  first tip was found at Rebel Inker. Stacey King has a pdf file that you can download with instructions for making this ink pad holder that uses only 2 pieces of foam core board. She used white foam core in her tutorial but I decided to use black and I got it at Hobby Lobby when it was on sale at 50% off- I’m ALWAYS looking for a good deal!

(Now I didn’t say that I was a master builder, ok? This is as good as it gets!)

This system was made to fit the Stampin’ Up! Ink pads but I found that with a little tweaking, you can use the basic pattern to create a number of configurations, not just for ink pads but for all kinds of storage.

It wasn’t that difficult to put together. I guess the hardest part was just cutting the foam core nice and straight. There are 5 compartments for the ink pads and each compartment holds 12 pads – again, these are SU pads. There is even a place to store your re-inkers at the top!

Because I bought the 2 pieces of foam core at 50% off, this project cost me about $5.00! Now what am I gonna do with the other 100 other brands of ink pads? LOL! More to come on that one. After I figure it out!

The other solution that I found was for my Tim Holtz Distress ink pads. –Hold on for a minute, AT! ok! I’m better now!

I like to use his inks with Inkssentials ink blending pads and Tim’s wooden tool. ok, did I just say that? That didn’t sound good -I’m really a good girl! But I didn’t want to get the inking pads & colors mixed up. So! I went back to Hobby Lobby –right, any excuse!- to purchase Velcro squares that were stick-on and some more ink blending foams.

I first stuck the rough side of the Velcro on the back of the ink pad and the softer side on the back of the blending foam.

Next step was to put the blending foam on the ink pad:

Now, when I need to use a certain color of ink, I grab it, take the blending foam off the back and stick it to the blending tool!

Even with the piece of Velcro between the pad and the tool, I have no problems at all getting a smooth, even color on my project. When I’m finished, I just reverse it – take the pad off the blending tool and place it back onto the bottom of the ink pad.

Easy as pie! Give it a try! If you do try either one of these storage tricks, please comment on this post and let me know. I just want to know if you like getting some tips & tricks on storage, scrapbooking and cricut related items also.

Dakota Bear, I hate to do this, but I can only give you until Wednesday, March 9th to contact me for your Blog Candy. After that date, I’ll have to pick another name!

Thanks for looking and until next time, Happy Crafting,