Welcome To Tool School!

Hi Everyone!!

Tool School is a new segment here on the blog where we are going to talk about different scrapbooking tools and how you can use them with your Pink Paislee products. Today, I am going to talk about copic markers, edge and shape punches, and stitching.

First, here’s my layout.

I loved these Hometown Summer alphas so much and wanted to use them but they didn’t work well with my white background. So I decided to color them. For nonporous surfaces such as these stickers, copic markers (or alcohol inks) work best. They are quick and dry instantly. I always prefer to color mine while they are still in the sticker sheet which helps me make sure all the edges are covered. And since I like my titles to have different colors, I used green copics for the word “love” and orange ones for the word “read.”

As soon as I saw I was assigned to “tool school” I knew I was going to talk about punches. They are, by far, my favorite of all scrapbooking tools. My favorite punches are the edge punches and I like to punch little strips of paper and layer them.  You can see the orange and blue strips below. I also used an edge punch for the small piece of blue paper behind the banner sticker on the left side.  Edge punches come in two forms: edge and deep edge. The edge ones have a straight edge on one side, like the one below. The deep edge ones punch an entire shape like the pink heart chains you can see on the full layout above.

By the way, I also inked the Summer Fun Hometown Summer paper strip above to make it more orange. Chalk inks are a quick and easy way to change the color of your patterned paper.

Another type of punch you can use on your pages is shaped punches. I generally use small ones like  the hearts you see below. I like the small accent and interest they add to my pages without taking too much attention away from the focus of my page. I often use these small punched shapes to guide the viewer’s eyes through my page.

And, finally, I wanted to mention machine stitching. I stitch on every single page. On this layout, I stitched a border, I stitched through my smaller title stickers, and through all my hearts. I even did a zigzag stitch on the strips with the edge punched shapes. I love the imperfection, texture, and interest sewing adds to my pages.

Here are all the Pink Paislee products I used on this page:

• Hometown Summer – Summer Fun
• Hometown Summer – Expressions Alphabet
• Butterfly Garden – Botanical Gardens
• Daily Junque – Tickets
• Soiree – Diamond
• Sweetness – Glitter Sticker Alphabets
• Sweetness – Doodads
• Sweetness – Element Stickers
• Sweetness – Pretty Lace

(I used FIVE collections on one layout, it goes to show you how wonderfully well our products work together!)

Thank you for letting me share my layout with you and I hope that you try copics, punches, or sewing on your next layout. Maybe you can try all three!