December MFT Creative Chat - Embellishments

It's time for the MFT Creative Chat. The My Favorite Things Design Team Creative Chat is a monthly feature, where we are challenged to explore our creative spaces and share valuable organizational methods, tools, and shopping strategies with you. You'll be able to peek into our creative spaces, ask questions, and share your own ideas in the MFT forum.  This month, we were asked the following questions:  


Show us how you store your embellishments.

What are your absolute favorite embellishments?

Any tips or tricks on how to use embellishments on stamped creations?

Visit Kim's Blog for a full list of designers that have taken up the challenge and get ready to delve into the minds of our creative team.


OK, are you ready for the tour? Let's go! I keep flat things like chipboard letters in a drawer in a Sterlite cabinet.

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I love canning jars and use them for all kinds of storage. I use them for canisters in my kitchen and buttons in my stamp room. These are the little pint jelly jars and I use the replacement white plastic tops instead of the lids and rings. Each of these jars contains one color of buttons. A little further back you'll see pint jars with color collections.

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The little 4 oz jars are perfect for brads. I don't use brads a lot, but I want them handy when I do. You'll also see some smaller button collections in these little jars. I keep all the jars on lazy Susans so I can see everything easily, at the touch of a finger.

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Here I have some Prima flowers, sorted by color, and all of my stick pins in one pint jar. I probably should sort them out into smaller jars.

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In this set of medium Sterlite drawers you'll see...Big Brads, LOL! It's even labeled! These are larger brads and Basic Gray Brads.

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In this set of medium Sterlite drawers I keep my bling.

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Bottom drawer has all my pearls.

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Middle drawer is gem stones.

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And top drawer is for my flourishes, gems and pearls.

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I also love Dew Drops. I keep my little bottles of them on a turntable handy to my stamping area. and...

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...also close by I have this nifty box of dispensers that I got on eBay. Lots of colors, conveniently packaged and also handy on my table.

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OK, that's it for storage. As for my favorite embellishment...well, it's a toss up between buttons and Dew Drops/pearls. I love buttons on ribbons, on twine, or simply by themselves--always with twine, never naked, LOL. I love them because you can use them with ANY style project--from CAS, to Vintage, to primitive, to, well, anything!

I love Dew Drops/pearls because they give the look of brads without the hassle. I never seem to be able to line brads up straight and then you've got the problem with the "legs" between layers. With Dew Drops or pearls, aligning them is much easier than brads for me. I did figure out a way around the "leggy" problem, though, and it also helps with lining them up. Sometimes nothing will do except a brad, KWIM? I'll show you how I manage them with a few pictures.

First, cut the legs off your brads as close as you can down inside the cap. I keep some wire cutters hand for this purpose.

Then, push the "stumps" down into the cap as far as possible. I use a hemostat but small needle nosed pliers or jewelry pliers would work. And sometimes I just smack it with the flat side of my wire cutters ;-)

Next, fill up the cap with liquid glue or Crystal Effects (my preference).

Don't overfill or it will leak out around your brad when you adhere it into place. Voila! No legs to deal with and you can move them a tiny bit if necessary for neatness.

And that's it for embellishments from me--thanks so much for stopping by! I hope I gave you a few things to think about when organizing your embellishments.

January teasers start tomorrow, so I'll be back with Day One and then later on with this week's MFT Wednesday Sketch Challenge! Hope to see you back!