Aug 21, 2009

Everything Old Can Be New Again


It seems like 10 years ago, we couldn't find the new techniques and fun products to put on our layouts fast enough. We were using slide mounts, bottle caps, magic mesh, fiber, eyelets, brads, staples, rings, buttons, etc. Have you noticed, though, that the "new" techniques and embellishment announcements have slowed to a snail's pace? It's like we have come up with every small, lightweight thing we could to stick on our pages and we're out of ideas. I think we all "jumped the shark" when one company tried to put out a line of colored bobby pins to use on our pages. I actually never saw those in my LSS. It was odd.

I remember ScrapBiz members buying bottle caps from a home-brewer place in massive quantities and dividing them up among members. Bottle caps were THE thing for a while. I still have a bunch of stickers in my stash made to fit in the middle of the flattened bottle caps. Every time you went to a crop, you could hear the pounding of mallets flattening the edges of those little gems.

Is it time to re-introduce some of those embellishments again? One kit company I know of is including slide mounts, bread tabs, bottle caps, etc. in their kits and scrappers (many of whom were NOT scrapping when these crazes were going on) think she's a genius! Maybe it's time to recycle and re-introduce fun projects using these simple embellishments! Another retailer is ruling the paper piecing universe. Scrappers are discovering techniques and embellishments that old-timers have forgotten.

I went through my files recently and found an article I had pulled from a scrapbook magazine all about making your own cute 3-D embellishments using bottle caps, tags, mesh, beads, etc. There were some very cute ideas! Maybe it's time to resurrect them. If you've been around a long time in the scrapbook industry, you should have no problem pulling out your old ideas.

I think we have forgotten at times that everyone in the scrapbook industry didn't arrive on the scene in 1997. Many only started scrapping in this decade and they missed a lot of these things. Can we update and reintroduce them and start the craze all over again? I bet we could!

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