Bling It On!

Bling is all the rage these days in the scrapbooking world. One doesn't have to look too hard to find a plethora of scrapbooking products boasting sparkle and shine. From individual gems and jeweled brads to photo corners and entire words a scrapbooker can find the perfect embellishment to add glitz and glam to his or her layout.

To top it off, they are so easy to use. Many of the bling products are self-adhesive. For those that are not I find the best adhesive for individual jewels or gems is mini glue dots.

Several manufacturers, including but not limited to Heidi Swapp for Advantus, Making Memories, MAMBI and Bazzill, all have products that can add pizzazz to all your paper-crafting projects. Heidi Swapp has an entire bling line that includes self-adhesive jewels, phrases, frames and shapes in a variety of colors and sizes. Making Memories makes crystal and shimmer brads in assorted colors that provide the perfect little sparkle to your layout. Place one in the center of layered flowers and voila, you have just a bit of bling on your project. MAMBI also makes bling words, names and accents that can be added to any crafting project. If you want even more than an embellishment, Bazzill Basics makes bling cardstock that is sure to wow anyone.

The amount of bling you use on a layout or other type of project is entirely up to you. You can use words or phrases for a playful title as I did in my "Sassy" layout. But why stop there? I think the added bling corner accents really help to bring your eye to the photo on the layout.

You can use bling to highlight just the portion of a photo that you want emphasized. That is exactly what I did on the "Presents" layout. I used a small bling circle frame to spotlight the words "happy birthday" on the gift bag in the photo. I took this idea a step further and cut a large circle bling frame in half and used it to "frame" my journaling in the same "Presents" layout. One single jewel in the center of a flower in the patterned paper provided just another bit of dimension to the layout.

Not quite ready to add bling to your layouts? Why not play with this fun embellishment on your next card? On the "Merci" card, I embellished floral rub-ons with self-adhesive jewels to add not only dimension but a little bit of sparkle too.

So, whatever your comfort zone may be, don't be afraid to have some fun and add some bling to your next layout or paper-crafting project. You are sure to be dazzled.

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