Buy A Stylus - Now

The very first thing I think that any crafter who makes cards or mini albums or envelopes or almost any paper project should tell you - but don't - is buy an embossing stylus.

I don't know why they don't. It sure would have saved me a few headaches and curse words. I watched some classes and heard a few offhand "Don't use the scorer that comes with this board" on most of them, but they didn't tell me what I should be using instead. I saw this little stick doohickey in their hand, but I never got a good look at it and I didn't know what it was called. And I looked and looked and looked at the Michaels and Joanns and occasional dedicated scrapbooking stores that I went to (I don't have a local one), but never saw anything like it until about a week ago.

Martha's come in a set of three.

I found the Martha Stewart set of embossing styluses at a Michaels and grabbed them up like they were gold. And wow, what a difference! My paper doesn't tear or get ripped to shreds by the serrated edges like it does on one of the scoring tools I have (that came with one of the scoreboards I bought). Seriously, what kind of idiot puts serrated edges on something used for paper?

Apparently, there are all kinds, made by many different manufacturers, but I didn't know that - mostly because I didn't know the name of the thing. I kept looking for a scoring tool and coming up with nada. It's called an embossing stylus.

Round tip - doesn't that just make sense?

The trick, you see, is in the tip. It's round. Because what else would make it if you're using it on paper and don't want it to tear? You wouldn't be dumb enough to make it pointy or serrated, would you? Well, pointy and/or serrated is what you get with all of the (three) score boards that I bought.

I'm using the middle one that has a small(ish) ball on one end and a large(ish) ball on the other. I've use the smaller end so far (on the Martha Stewart scoreboard and the We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch board). There are two more with pointier ends and another balled end, but I don't want to grab the pointy end by mistake, so I use the one with two balled ends.

 Why more stores don't carry them, I have no idea. And why online crafters don't tell every newbie to get one of these - and pronto - is also a mystery.

So I'm telling you. Go on Google or Yahoo or Etsy or Ebay or whatever you search medium of choice is and get one, or two, of these. They'll save your paper, your temper and your loved ones eardrums.

A Pop-Up Card in a Box

Today being Father's Day and all, I decided to make this sweet little box card for my husband. I followed the super-easy tutorial from papercrafter45 over on her YouTube channel [click here to go to the video]. This is the second tutorial of hers that I've followed and I can't tell you how wonderfully clear her directions are! Everything step-by-step, with crystal clear photos to make sure you get it exactly right.

If you're new to papercrafting, like I am, please do yourself a favour and go check out this channel. You won't be sorry!

The pop up box from the front

 I used Teresa Collins' World Traveler 6x6 paper pad for this project. I added some Tim Holtz tags and rub-ons and a couple of Jolee's tool stickers as well. I used Michaels' Recollections card stock for the box itself and I have to say that I am less than thrilled with it. As soon as I get the chance (and some money) I'm going to get a stash of both the Bazzill that Kathryn Kreiger at Kathryn Scraps recommends and the Paper Accents that Kathy Files from Paper Phenomenon uses and see if I like either of those better.

I'm still working on getting my matting perfectly straight - having a Band-aid on my thumb didn't help, either. (Tip: don't pare apples for a pie while trying to communicate something important to your spouse. One or the other will suffer.)

I did as she did in the tutorial and triple matted it and I was very pleased with the result. I didn't ink the edges of my paper, mainly because the box is a tiny 1 1/2" wide (not including the box flaps) by 3" tall and the only colour that I thought looked good was the dark Distress Inks' Walnut Stain and I didn't like all that darkness on my tiny box.

A side view

The only thing that didn't work for me is that my card did not fit in an envelope for a 3x3 card, as she said it would. Maybe I overfilled mine? No idea. But it wasn't really a problem,  because I just got out my We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board and made one a little bigger (the 3 1/2 x 3 1/2" size) and that was just dandy. I had used the last piece of matching patterned paper for the 3x3 box, but I used a paper from the same collection for the second envelope, so it went well enough.

If you head over to papercrafter45's YouTube channel, tell her that Laine sent you!