I have a lot of fun with different things in my paper crafting. I was working on a birthday layout for Thad's 8th birthday dinner at Golden Gate, and after I added these fun buttons (one of them was covered in paper, the other two are transparent buttons that I glued matching glitter to on the backs... all three buttons are attached with 1/16th" brads, which is another one of my favorite "techniques". I know I didn't invent this. But I did discover it for myself, and I love it.), I felt that the page still needed something more. So I decided to add a few jewels. LoL. And this is what happened. I had, on a layout I just did, run out of the string of jewels that I was using to border the left side of all of my photos. I still needed a bit of it, so I applied a line of glue and just glued a straight line of clear jewels. On this layout, I decided to try making something fancier. I saw my little jar of mixed jewels and thought they would make a perfect party accessory. This is what my finished thing looked like:
Here's what it looks like super close up: (If anyone ever gets this close to your page, smack them. It's rude.) I glued these down with my favorite liquid glue: Scotch Quick Dry Adhesive. It dries perfectly clear. You can see that here. My happy discovery on the smaller thing I did on my other page was that even though I made a huge glue mess when I was doing it, the glue really does dry so clear that you don't even notice it. Also, this is about as much adhesive as will show on even some of the super fancy jewel things that you can buy in a store for like $5.00 each.
This is what it looks like wet: (I added more at the top of the page because I can't help myself.)
Here's how you do it. Basically, just draw the line that you want with your pencil, if you're doing a fancy swirlie thing like this. Use a stamp as your base, maybe, or trace it from a stencil, or just free hand it like I did. Over the photos, I sort of eyeballed what the line would be. Draw your line of glue over the pencil line (or the imaginary one). Don't do a whole long thing or else the glue will dry too fast. I could do about 3 inches without it drying before I got to the end of it, but I'm really fast. You might want to start with a shorter length until you figure it out.
Place your jewels with tweezers. Again, these are acrylic jewels. Holy moly, don't do this with Swarovski. Please. Basically, I pick up any jewels that are face up and then let go of them when they are where I want them to go (without touching the glue, which you'll figure out, but until you do, wipe the tweezers frequently), and then close the tweezers and push on the top of the jewel to make sure it's in the spot.
It takes a while. But I think it's fun. I also think spinning my own yarn is fun. This might be an indicator of my crafting personality, and a sign that we might not match. If we're not compatible in this way, you may want to proceed with caution. Start small. (There, I did a disclaimer... that was awfully nice of me. Wouldn't you say?)
I added extra fun shapes once the other swirl was there because apparently 100 little jewels in a lovely swirling row is just not enough bling for me. Again, personality indicator, etc., we may not match, proceed with caution, blah, blah, blah. ^_~
There's my final title before it dried. I need to take a picture of it dry so that you can see how perfectly the glue disappears. It doesn't just dry clear. It dries smaller. So the HUGE pile of white glue you see will be clearer and a bit smaller once it's completely dry. This process takes a long time, by the way. At least an hour. Maybe two, even though it says it's quick dry adhesive.
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