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.

This is a great topic and I can't wait to see how the rest of the Design Team approaches this topic.  I recently did a thorough clean-out, purge, and re-organize of my stamp room. I had always been a big stickler for keeping things in their original packaging or with similar items from the same company.  I like to write up a detailed recipe with my projects, and I felt like keeping things separated helped me.  Well, I bit the bullet and switched over to the ROYGBIV system - separating items by colors of the rainbow.  I had three small Sterilite drawer systems purchased from Target that weren't really being used in a useful manner so I put them to good use.

I have an L-shaped desk and these drawers sit right on my desktop to my right.  They don't take up much space at all, less than 2' wide and about 7" deep.  As you can see, they also serve as a nice surface to display some recent cards :)  Generally I have about 6 cards up there, but I had to remove some as they are for the MFT Teasers starting tomorrow :)  Here is a shot of the inside of my drawers.  As you might see, I have not totally let go of my "original packaging" hang up!  I am getting there though!  You can also see which colors I am not a big user of :)  In these drawers are basically all my buttons, brads, clips, slides, tabs, and other small doo dads.

 The "random die cuts" drawer are things that didn't work for a particular project.  This drawer holds mostly felt and cork cuts that I don't want to waste :)  They are here because there was a space! 

I also have two large Sterilite drawer systems, also purchased at Target.  I keep purchased flowers, pearls, bling, and miscellaneous embellishments in these.  In the coordinating category are  embellishments that coordinate with a specific paper collection and I do have these in their original packaging.  The other embellishments are larger items that don't really fit another category.  These units sit on a ledge directly in front of me as I sit at my desk.  I am about ready to take a look at my storage again, as the left hand unit here barely has had anything removed in the past few months....

So that's my storage system, always a work in progress.   I really do like these drawer units though.  They are clear and the drawers can be completely removed making looking through them very easy :)

So, as for the next part of the chat - what are my favorites and any tips or tricks for using embellishments?

My most favorite embellishments are buttons.  I love buttons because they are just so cute and you can use them in so many ways - as an accent (a cluster or to adorn a bow), to hold something on (think sentiment flag or the ribbon hanger on a tag), or as part of your focal image (think balloons, dots on i's, the letter "o").  There are also so many ways to thread buttons, which is how I like my buttons - no naked buttons for me - LOL!  Baker's twine, floss, even ribbon for larger buttons.  I usually try to actually sew the buttons to my projects, if possible.  I position the buttons where I want them and use my paper piercer to poke holes through my project, and then I get out my needle and thread.  If that isn't possible, I will sometimes use a glue dot but most often a liquid adhesive.  I use Liquid Glass from CTMH - that stuff is super strong and dries quickly.

The other embellishments I reach for a lot are pearls and sparkles.  These are a great way to  jazz up so many projects.  I will say these are the embellishment I most often add to my card after I think I have completed it!  A little cluster of sparkles in an empty corner can sometimes make a world of difference, or use them as flower centers or  to accent a sentiment - dots on i's or the curly ends of handwriting fonts.  I generally use self adhesive pearls and sparkles.  The easiest way to transfer these from the carrier sheet to your project is to use your paper piercer.  You can also use larger pearls/sparkles to adorn the corners of image or sentiment panels, or your card fronts. 

Well that is all I have today to share!  Be sure to stop by Kim's blog to see who else is participating in this chat.  Teasers start tomorrow!!  See you then :)