Get Crafty

By: Kathy Williams

Crafters are looking everywhere for inspiration on their latest paper craft project. You can find unique embellishments in at unique locations, such as your local hardware store. While a hobby or craft store is a fantastic place to start since they sell many card and scrapbooking essentials, a great alternative is your local hardware store. Hardware stores usually have a great variety of unique things which make fabulous paper craft, scrapbooking, and card making embellishments.

Scrapbooking and card making is reflective of you, so go ahead and experiment with anything you like. When we shopped through our local hardware store, we were amazed at how many items were being repackaged in smaller quantities and sold as scrapbooking embellishments. Indeed, you may find your hardware store to be the most inexpensive place in town to purchase embellishments if you are willing to buy larger quantities of the same items. (Why not split the items up between a group of crafting friends)

Wire and hemp string make a great embellishment for scrapbooking since they add real depth of character and can be applied in so many different ways. Hemp is very versatile as well. Try twisting them around cookie cutter shapes to make hearts, bears, stars, etc. The limit for these two embellishments is only in your imagination!
 

Try using a sanding sponge with some varying grits of sandpaper to achieve unique, distressed paper. Cut a piece of sandpaper to fit around the sanding sponge and you will have a solid grip while you distress the edges of your scrapbook paper or paper craft project. Different grits accomplish different looks. Grab a multi pack of sandpaper and see which style you like the best.

You will also find many different types of hinges ranging from classic to modern. You can paint a bag of hinges matte white using a spray paint can. Then all you need to do is colour them with your favourite stamp pad, creating a unique, coordinated hinge!

 

Don't forget to check out the tiny padlocks and keys that can be purchased in the hardware section of the store. Paint these as well to match the colour scheme and you will be amazed at how they make a wonderful new dimension to the page.

The great thing about buying chain at a hardware store is the fact that they will cut it to your requested length. Why purchase five feet of chain when you really only need five inches? Wire mesh (which can be found with the gutter supplies) looks wonderful on scrapbooking paper too. A little bit of wire mesh goes a long way too. Just a small square will give a handsome look and won't overwhelm your card.

Often an overlooked source for great scrapbooking embellishments, hardware stores have been known to yield classy, lifelong embellishments for a fraction of the cost you would purchase them at a hobby store. Head over to your hardware store with a creative eye and you are bound to find embellishments that will give your paper craft project perfect charm!

Kathy Williams loves working in Rubber Stamping Fun, her online stamping store, and enjoys writing informative articles about rubber stamps and scrapbooking.