Homemade Embellishments

As much as I love and drool over the beautiful embellishments that you can find in the stores these days, there is something about the homemade variety that I will always adore.  Perhaps it's because it goes right to the heart of scrapping, for me, cataloging the times and essence of our lives. 

My latest addiction is clothing tags.  With a baby girl around, you can imagine the gorgeous styles, names and prints that accompany her beautiful little clothes.  They make wonderful embellishments, tags, fodder for titles, and more.  Even cuter are the woven tags in the back of her little outfits.  I lucked up on a lot of yard-sale clothes, which I try to keep intact, but every once in a while, a particularly rowdy dinner or overfull diaper renders the outfit unwearable for future users.   From those, I love snagging the beautiful tags for page embellishments.  Just look at the colors and patterns! 

Beach towels are another great place to steal tags from and not worry about losing the size information, FYI!

Anothe hobby I've started is collecting bottle caps.  My hubs loves Stewart's Orange Soda, and we occasionally buy Jones Soda, and I love saving the caps from all those drinks for my scrapping endeavors. After cleaning them thoroughly, I like to paint them, or cover the tops with chipboard or paper, and put a Pop-Dot behind them for a chunky embellishment on my page.  Sometimes, If I don't need that much height, I will take my crafting hammer and flatten the outer flanges, which creates a new look and still brings dimension to my pages.

These are great for adding the date to a page, to stamp or mount the first letter of a title, to use as bubbles or balloons, wheels or balls, depending on the theme of your page.  They're a wonderful place to mount flowers, or to use as the center of a large flower.  The possibilities are endless!

Share with us your favorite homemade embellishments, and we'll all have a new idea for our next crop!

Til then, happy scrapping!