Hot Glue Embellishments

This is another technique featured in CSB #5, and is kind of fun for something different! You might be able to find some coloured glue sticks around - I have bought them at dollar stores and in scrapbook clearance bins, and I saw a bunch on ebay if you're so inclined, but regular clear glue will work too. Just stick a glue stick in a hot glue gun (if you don't have one, you can pick them up at the dollar store and it's handy to have more than one if you are working with a variety of colours) and use the glue to draw a design. I'm not much of a free hand artist, I like to trace something, so I will either stamp directly on a heat and stick sheet such as the one sold by Ranger and trace that, or lay a transparency over dingbats or letters printed on a piece of paper. With the heat and stick sheet, the glue peels off easily when it's cooled; with the transparency, pop it into a freezer for a few minutes and the glue will pop right off. Trim any stray strands of glue with scissors, and rub with Perfect Pearls pigment powder if desired. This looks great on the clear glue embellishments, kind of shimmery and translucent.



So, for this layout, I just printed out the title and some big flower dingbats onto a piece of paper, laid a transparency over it and traced it with pink glue. Easy and unique. Patterned paper is by Glitz Designs and the bird/branch chipboard is by Maya Road.

Brrrrr

I guess winter is here with a vengeance. It was -36C when I got up yesterday morning, and had warmed to -33 by the time the kids went off to catch the school bus. Sigh. Of course, once we went into the deep freeze, something went wrong with my car. At speeds above 60 km/hr, the Mazda would start to vibrate very strongly, getting worse with increasing speeds so that it seemed the whole vehicle would shake apart at 80 km/hr. Since I spend a lot of time on the highway, this had me seriously freaked out. I had visions of spending many hours at the dealership while they figured out what was wrong. Sigh. Still under warranty, but still...... what a pain. Although it seemed unlikely that the tires would be balanced on Friday and unbalanced on Sunday, I started with Costco to balance the tires, since this is where I bought them from. Turned out that when the tire guy took my wheels off, great quantities of ice came out of the wheel wells. Once this ice was gone, voila...... driving returned to normal. And it didn't cost me anything, if you don't count the two hundred bucks I spent while I was killing time waiting for my car. ;-)

Anyway, I guess this is not uncommon, so if your car starts to shake and shimmy after a big snowstorm, it's probably ice in your wheels. I guess the heat from the brakes melts the snow, which reforms into ice at some point. And if there's lots of it, and it's not even, the wheels are seriously unbalanced.

Canadian Scrapbooker Basics Volume 5

Oh, I just love this magazine. I'm a bit of a technique junkie, I an never having more fun than when I am doing new things! Must be the scientist in me, but I just love to experiment. CSB #5 has easy step by step instructions for all kinds of funky techniques, many of which are really quick and easy. One of my favourite techniques is gilding. I was introduced to this through one of the Scraptivity kits and quickly became addicted. Give it a try, it's very easy, not very expensive and makes you like an artist! lol The metal leafing comes in all sorts of metalish colours - copper, silver, gold, and so on. You just brush some special glue that remains tacky(my favourite is Duo Adhesive by US Artquest but many things would work, including glue lines or anything that doesn't dry completely and lose it's stickiness) and rub on the gilding flakes. Brush off the extra, and that's it!