Tips, Trends, and Techniques - Using Fasteners

Hello, Trixie Scraps fans! Mary Kate here with another Tip, Trends, and Techniques Tuesday. Today I would like to talk about using fasteners on your pages to help create a more realistic scrapbook feel on a digitally done page. Now, before I give you some examples of fastener use on a page, I must talk to you about “Realism.” You see, there are those out there that do not use their rulers in their programs or even have a good eye on the size of buttons, staples, brads, paper clips, etc. Sometimes you will see layout with 3″ sized buttons, when they rarely ever go above 3/4″. Then, when you have it printed out, it looks, well, ridiculous. I know, I did it in my early scrapping days *hangs head in shame*. So, I have tried to help a little with this for everyone… I went on a hunt in my house for some of the more basic fasteners and took pictures of them next to a ruler. So here they are:

Now you can bookmark this post for easy reference. 😉

I would like to show you a couple layouts from our Scrap Stars who have done a fabulous job demonstrating this for us.

I used Happy Homebody and Layer Lovers v. 2 for this layout. The buttons are just enough to hold down my paper layers and the string across the page.

Scrap Star Erica did a great job making sure the buttons within the flowers were not to big for the rest of the layout… this is something else that you should be on the lookout for (buttons/brads within flowers). She used the Apples For Teacher and Layer Lovers v. 2 for her layout.

Scrap Star Jennifer B. uses brads to hold down her photos and some stars to help emphasize her little boy! She used My Brother My Pal and the matching Page Starters.

Finally, Scrap Star Kris used the simple page fastener to hold down the layered papers in the corner of her layout. She used All About Me: The Tweens, Early Birds Berry Beauty, and Greatest Hits v. 9.