Brads are great for attaching vellum or other specialty papers, creating moveable joints or parts on paper piecings, accenting your layouts and much, much more. And, hey, you don't even need a hammer to use these! You'll be able to use them on those late nights when you are up scrapping at 2 AM; you won't even have to worry about waking those family members who happen to be catching some Zs!
Brads are very versatile and come in different shapes, sizes and colors. As for shapes, currently there is the circle, star and heart. The circle comes in quite a few different colors and sizes and the star and heart are available in brass and silver. And as their popularity increases, I am sure more shapes will be created, just like with the eyelet. Aside from not needing any tools to use them, the best thing about brads is their versatility; their color can be changed to match your layout perfectly. I will get into how to do that later on this month. First we will start with a few of the more basic uses.
Probably the most common technique for a brad is to use it to attach paper, which just happens to be what they are designed to do. As, I mentioned earlier, they are perfect for attaching vellum. Vellum is one of those materials that cause grief to scrappers everywhere. Scrappers are constantly asking, "What is the best way to attach vellum?" Well, here is that answer. Look at the following examples for a few ideas.
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Brads also look great as accents to titles, like the star brads used in this layout.
Heather used the brads to hold her fiber in place and it looks great. You could also used them to accent stickers, die cuts, photo corners or even just make a simple border of brads to add a little decoration to your page. Another idea would be to make a brad border on your photo matte and hang something from them.
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I hope these ideas have sparked your creativity. Go ahead; give some of these techniques a try! Come back next week when I'll give you even more ideas to get creative - the BRAD way.
