Kit Tips...

I thought I'd start my week with some close-ups of a couple of my January Kit layouts and highlight a couple tips...

Adding to Leigh's Stretching your Alphas blog posts, I seemed to go through a lot of 'O's this month, and even using the zeros, I ran out... but with chipboard letters, you can peel off the top layer and end up with a raw one and a finished one! I did it after I applied to the layout, but you could do it from the sheet too. After I peeled off the top layer, I used glue for that half, and outlined the raw one left on my layout with pen.

I love all the stitching Leigh adds to a lot of her layouts, but for some reason my machine doesn't co-operate with me (or maybe I haven't practiced enough). So, to get the look of stitching without the fighting, I used a ruler, a paper piercer and a mousepad to pierce a row of dots on my paper. Then I used a pen to connect the dots. I found it was a more realistic stitched look to not use a ruler for that part. The pierced dots seemed to pull the pen toward them and I got a messy stitched look. I distressed the edges of the paper to get the look I wanted.

I hope you find these ideas helpful/inspirational!