New Products and Tools Give Boost to Creativity!

I am a so guilty of spending way too much on anything to do with cards and scrapbooking. I admit it! I am addicted! But the plain truth is that new products, new tools, new techniques, new craft magazines arriving in the mail all give great boosts to my creativity. I started playing around with my templates I got at the Expo this past summer and am tickled by what I came up with. My friends at Project Playground last week, were wonderful in giving me their thoughts.  I got this awesome tree template and wanted to play around with it. Mind you, this is out of my realm of expertise. I was embarking on new territory using a template. I finally got some glitter and flock at Joann's so I was ready to give it a try like I had seen at the Expo. Well, my first tree, I just did with green flock. Cool but not good enough, So, friendly advise said go with fall colors and I could because I got a whole set of glitter and flock in lot of colors. So, I decided to use several colors of glitter and some flock to and was so totally BLOWN AWAY by how it came out. I just love it. Well, I had to improve upon it so I added some distressing ink from Tim Holtz but wasn't quite satisfied so I did the distressed background first with spritz of perfect pearls and started to add the tree. The paper was a little warped from the wetting and heat setting so my template did not want to lay flat but I gave it a go and thought, "let's see what happens". OH MY GOSH! It just got SO much more beautiful. That warpness in the paper allowed more of the paste to get through the template design that it made the tree look fuller. Well, I loved the final outcome but found it only really looked awesome in full light because the red background blended with the red in the tree too much so I did it all again with tea dye color distressed ink from Tim Holtz. Yeah! I think I finally got it the way I like it most but they all look good in their own way too. It's never boring trying new things that is for sure.  What are you wanting to try out in your crafting?