Metal Scrapbook Embellishments

Scrapbooking with metal embellishments can add a pleasing look to your page. Not only does it lend unique textures, but it also helps to make for an interesting page overall.

Metal scrapbooking embellishments may come in different types of metal. Brass, gold, silver, antique or even vintage hues. You can even paint or distress plain metal scrapbook embellishments to give a vintage metal scrapbooking look.

The types of metal scrapbook embellishments that are available out there are enormous - this is due to their popularity in the last number of years, of course. There are scrapbook washers with sayings on them, metal word embellishments, small metal scrapbook lettering, and of course charms for any subject like baby, wedding, sports, child, travel, birthday and more. Also considered metal scrapbooking embellishments are metal eyelets and brads. These not only look like an embellishment on a page, but they also act as a method to attach things. See more for this idea below.

When using metal embellishments there are a couple of things you'll you'll be glad to know of.

Firstly, metal embellishments can be heavy, so be careful when carrying the page around. If the page ends up being quite heavy, I would recommend supporting it with a piece of cardboard behind it and then inserting that into your plastic sleeve in the scrapbook album.

The second thing that you'll need to consider when working with metal scrapbook embellishments

is how to attach them. Other than using a really strong metal adhesive glue, you can try using double sided sticky tape, foam tape, or even wire with metal eyelets or brads. ("Making Memories" makes a metal glue which is readily available.) When we talk about using wire, this would be a suitable method if there are holes on the edges of the metal scrapbook embellishment. Often small metal scrapbook letters and words have tiny holes around the edges. This is also true of metal

scrapbooking embellishment charms. You can simply use a metal eyelet or metal brad to poke

through the hole and attach it to your scrapbook

layout. You could also hang several metal

scrapbook embellishments together by stringing

some metal wire through the holes and wrapping it

around. This would make a really neat effect!

Now for the fun! Let's take a look at a few ideas for scrapbooking using metal scrapbook

embellishments!

The cute metal scrapbook embellishments shown at left are actually charms of tiny tools. They would be great for a masculine scrapbook layout. They are made by "Embellish It."

Metal scrapbook embellishment charms come in so many cute shapes. Love the baby themed metal washer charms shown here. They are made by "Making Memories." They are actually metal word embellishments.

You can get metal word scrapbook embellishments also. The ones shown here have the years on them. Also made by "Making Memories."

Scrapbook Flower Embellishments

Flowers for scrapbooking embellishing can be so expensive. Prima makes some really beautiful ones like you see in the photo at left. BUT, they are so expensive. Also, you only get a few in the package. I've been getting so sick of spending money on flowers for scrapbook embellishing that I thought it time to make some of my own OR go looking for some cheaper ones. Most of the time you are paying for all that packaging.

Guess what? There are cheaper flowers that are just as good for embellishing a scrapbook page than those expensive ones. When I say cheap scrapbook embellishments, that is what I mean. Check out your local dol

lar store. You will be surprised to find cheap scrapbook supplies. (Watch for another post to come on finding scrapbook embellishments at your local dollar store!). Anyway, back to the subject at hand. As I was saying, there are silk flowers by the dozens at my local dollar that are more than suitable for embellishing a scrapbook page.

You may ask, "How do I get a dollar store silk flower to lay flat and be used as a scrapbook embellishment on my page?" Well, get some tough scissors and cut off the shank. Yep, that's right. Cut off the shank. It is as easy as that. Take a brad or eyelet, from your scrapbook embellishment storage, and attach it through the centre of the 'shankless' flower. Then use that to attach your brand new invented scrapbook embellishment flower to your scrapbook layout! No one will ever know.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "But, I thought everything has to be acid free on my page." Well you know what my answer to that is? My answer is, "Who cares about that." Really! Who cares about acid free when you have digital photos? How many people scrap from photos that aren't digital anymore? No one I know, that's for sure. Scrapbook embellishments don't need to be acid free if your photos are digitally backed up. They are on your computer. They

are on cd's. They are on portable hard drives. So who cares about acid free scrapbook embellishments unless you are planning on your scrapbook layout to last forever. That part to me isn't as important as the photos lasting. I'm not that vain that I want my so called "artwork" to last forever. I'm not Picaso or Rembrandt. It's the photos that are important, not the scrapbook page. In this day and time, we are concerned about cheap scrapbooking

embellishments more than acid free. It's all about the fun in creating your own scrapbook embellishments and that they are cost effective.

Looking for more ideas flower embellishments for scrapbooks? Make your own paper flower scrapbook embellishments. There are many ways to do this, all with different outcomes for flowers to use embellishing a scrapbook layout. First start with a template. And, make your own template, no need to buy one. Fold a piece of blank paper in half. From that draw half a flower shape around the fold. Cut it out and open to get your flower shape.

Trace it onto a piece of patterned paper and cut out. Then crinkle it out into a ball and unfold. You will get a distressed scrapbook embellishment flower. You can attach your handmade scrapbook embellishment to your page by punching a hole through the middle and putting a brad or eyelet through it. You can also feed a piece of ribbon through it too like shown in the photo above. I like these flowers because they always turn out different and the effect is one of a 3D scrapbooking embellishment - lovely decoration for your page.

Another method of making a flower scrapbook embellishment is to do the same as above with your template, but now make two more of these. One bigger and one smaller. Then trace these shapes on the back of some pretty patterned paper. I like to use double-sided paper for this as my flower scrapbook embellishment will show the backs once we attach it to the page. Something fun to do is attach a piece of costume jewelry through the centre and attach it to your page.

There, you have some flower scrapbook embellishments - perfect to use on any scrapbook page.

Free Scrapbook Embellishments

There are really two types of *FREE* when it comes to free scrapbook embellishments. The first would be finding things around your home (or your Mother's home, LOL!) that you can use to embellish your scrapbook for free. The second, which is the focus of this post, is using free digital scrapbooking embellishments on the net.

There are so many places online that you can go to in order to download free scrapbook embellishments. Most of the time you will find that you need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader to see the PDF file that the free scrapbook embellishment downloads are created in. From there, save the file to your computer and you are set to print it off. Or, you can print while viewing it. I would suggest saving the file so you have it for future use. Be sure and save the file with the name of the artist or site where you found it so you can give credit to the designer if and when you decide to post your completed scrapbook layout online or submit it to a publication for publishing. One other note about saving the files. You will find that these files are often large and

take up a lot of space on your hard drive. So, you may want to copy them to a CD or a portable hard drive instead. Free digital scrapbooking embellishments are also given in other formats so that you can use them in PhotoShop and thus manipulate them. I won't go into that too much more. There are other places with more info on this and my purpose is to talk about the embellishments, not how to use Photoshop.

You can get this lovely free scrapbooking embellishment kit from Digi-Designs by Nicole. See photo above.

In addition to digital scrapbook embellishments, there are also lots of free vintage drawings and photos that can be had online for free. As well, many other clipart items can be printed out on your home computer and used in a scrapbook layout as a scrapbook embellishment. Think on the holidays. You can get lots of suitable material online for free.

Here are some beautiful vintage images of children that can be used as scrapbook embellishments in a children's album.

This image above of a mother and child would be perfectas a scrapbook embellishment for a Mother's Day layout. Such a sweet and touching image.

Looking for borders to embellish a scrapbook page? The one shown above came from here. For more, please click here.

Make your own stickers by finding the appropriate clipart and printing it out on sticker paper for another free scrapbook embellishment. Another idea is if you have a Xyron sticker maker then you can print it out on regular paper and run the image through the Xyron machine. Then you have a custom made sticker - perfect to embellish your scrapbook layout.

This website has lots of free clipart available. Many of them would be more than suitable for scrapbookers to embellish their scrapbook pages with. There are scrapbooking tags, scrapbook journaling spots and more.

There is no need to pay a truckload for stickers, and other scrapbook embellishments at the store. Simply use the internet to it's advantage and print off your own digital scrapbook embellishments.

Holiday Scrapbook Embellishments

We just celebrated St.Patrick's Day in our household and took lots of photos for scrapbook pages. I've been looking around and thinking about what kinds of things I can use to embellish my scrapbooking pages. Scrapbook embellishment ideas are what I need. All I had to do was put my thinking cap on.

There are so many free scrapbook embellishments that can be had. You can download free scrapbooking embellishments by searching for downloadable printables or digital scrapbooking embellishments. They are often PDFs that you can download to your own computer and voila: FREE DIGITAL SCRAPBOOKING EMBELLISHMENTS!

Other sources for free scrapbook embellishments are found around your home. Have you tried this? Make your own embellishments. It's cheaper and more unique of an option. Let's get thinking. Do you have a heart shaped cookie cutter? You can use it as a pattern to trace out a shamrock onto green cardstock. Simply trace and cut out 3 hearts and glue them down onto your scrapbook page to form a shamrock. You can also cut out a little stem and glue that down too. Another option for a stem is to use a piece of green ribbon or even a green pipe cleaner. To decorate your shamrock scrapbooking embellishment you can add some pretty green glitter glue around the edges or chalk the edges or ink the edges.

Another scrapbooking embellishment that you can use for St. Patrick's Day is a belt buckle. Metal scrapbooking embellishments are always popular. They give added texture and dimension to your scrapbook layout. Find an unused belt and take the buckle off of it. Glue it to your page for a leprechaun's belt. (you can have black cardstock strip underneath for the belt part).

Make a woolly sheep scrapbooking embellishment for your page by gluing mini white pompoms in an oval shape to a piece of cardstock. Glue on a little black snout cut from black cardstock and 4 sticks for legs.

Looking to make more scrapbooking embellishments on your own? Gather together some St. Patrick's Day greeting cards you may have received. Cut out the images and there you have more embellishments for scrapbooking.

Of course, you can also purchase scrapbooking embellishments that are specifically tailored for St. Patrick's Day. Karen Foster Designs makes the cute St. Patrick's Day embellishments for scrapbooks shown above. Also shown are scrapbook embellishments made by Reminisce.

I hope this helps you out a little. I would love to see what ideas you have for making your own St. Patrick's Day scrapbook embellishments.