This technique works well for cards as the items don’t have to be acid/lignin free and most cards don’t contain photographs so no worries there either! You can really stretch you scrapbooking budget by incorporating this technique into your cardmaking and saving those precious brads for your scrapbooking pages! To create this project, I used:
- Paper: New Garden Collection: Flower patch (Crate Paper)
- Cardstock: New Garden Collection (Crate Paper)
- Stamp: Tag you’re it (Kim Hughes for Cornish Heritage Farms)
- Ink: Desert Sands (Close To My Heart)
- Ribbon: (ki memories)
- Flower: (Prima Marketing Inc.)
Create the base of your card design, on this card you can see I added a stamped greeting, and although the square flower panel is laid down I haven’t adhered it to the card yet, it needs the ‘brad’ flower center.
You can use any kind of flat thumbtack, but I find the ones with the plastic coating work especially well for this technique.
For this project I chose a yellow thumbtack. However I wasn’t really satisfied with the overall look of the card, the yellow thumbtack was a bright primary yellow which was a stark contrast to the soft orangey yellow of the patterned paper.
To remedy this I took the thumbtack between my fingers and colored over it with a marker pen or inkpad. The pen will bead in on the surface but enough will penetrate the plastic to change the hue of the color. Simply wipe clean with a small cloth/tissue to clear the residue ink.
As you can see with the before/after thumbtacks side by side the difference is subtle but striking. Using the marker pen really tones down the brightness of the yellow.
To add the thumbtack to the card, push through the flower, and cardstock, and hammer the prong over on the reverse. The card is then complete, and no-one will ever know that it contains a thumbtack not a brad!
To find the products mentioned in this article and shown in these layouts, check with your local scrapbook retailer. Browse our Premier Retail Stores for coupons to a store near you.
