Thursday, August 13, 2009

Stickers and Rub-ons

We all have them, right? Probably more than we care to admit to anyone too! LOL

I recently packed up some scrappy supplies to bring with me on vacation to scrap. I tried to choose items that I do not normally reach for, be it due to my laziness or poor memory, or both! Two of those said items are stickers, specifically alpha stickers, and rub-ons. I love both products but I just seem to forget to reach for them when I am in the midst of creating. And when the nearest scrappy store is 3+ hours away by car, I find myself finding new ways to use these scrappy staples.

Below are a couple of layouts from today (I guess I was feeling extra creative today!)



Firstly, I used some less than perfect pictures that captured our summer family vacation rituals, cropped out the distracting elements and then put them all together in a snappy collage. Then I used some leftover scraps of BasicGrey's Offbeat collection to frame my photo collage.

At that point, it still seemed unfinished to me...and I still had the full BasicGrey Olio Book which matches the Offbeat collection. My first thought was to place a rub-on in an "empty" area on a photo. But divine intervention by my youngest took over! As I was getting a glass of iced tea, she decided to "help" me put on the rubs that I had cut out of the book. Well, if I'll be darned, I really liked that tone on tone look! It adds some interest and texture to the otherwise "neutral" paper. So I finished rubbing on the rest of the vines!

On top of the vines, I put some rubs on cream cardstock and fussy cut the images. These images were adhered ontop of the rub on vines. Below is a detailed look at this technique.

With my other layout, also using the Offbeat collection and shown below I layered rub-ons right on top of each other and I also grouped elements together.

Here is a close-up of the layering and grouping; there are 7 rub-ons used.

These same techniques can be applied to stickers. In the close-up photo below, I used some of the left-over Thickers numbers and alphas from 3 different American Crafts remarks books. (And I have to say it felt fantastic to use up all those sheets!)

I hope you will give these techniques a try and if you have tips to share, please post them here!

4 comments:

Jillian said...

These are all great V! I Love my thickers...but I'd been hoarding them....recently I started pulling them out and using them more though...they're much better looking on my pages, than in my desk. lol
Thanks for the push to get inventive with some basics!

Jess said...

Love how you were able to use up so much of your stash! I *so* need to use more rubs!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the great tips V and your layouts are stunning...as usual!!

Unknown said...

Great tips V! And lovely layouts too!