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I was watching a video and when the person went to position her brads she had a little sheet of squared holed plastic.
Yes i know it was the plastic canvas we had as children for cross stitching, it's about $1.50 a sheet, and guess what my children have some in their craft box.
It gives you equal spaces to be able to place your brads in a line or diagonally.
:p :p :p
I always hated the fact mine were never quiet spaced in a line or at equal distances... but no longer.
I was watching a video and when the person went to position her brads she had a little sheet of squared holed plastic.
Yes i know it was the plastic canvas we had as children for cross stitching, it's about $1.50 a sheet, and guess what my children have some in their craft box.
It gives you equal spaces to be able to place your brads in a line or diagonally.
:p :p :p
I always hated the fact mine were never quiet spaced in a line or at equal distances... but no longer.
so who else has a cheap tool tip.
This is exactly what I bought - I got a big sheet of it and cut it into all different sizes and it works perfect! I think it was 75 cents I was going to get the template from Stampin UP but this works just as well!
Location: ... in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin.
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thanks for sharing the tip about plastic canvas. I can use my piercing tool to start the hole for placement of eyelets too. That way my eyelets will always be straight too.
__________________ Who would have thought that paper, ink & rubber could create a priceless keepsake or give me treasured friends.
You can also buy plastic canvas in circles. This makes great measurements for placing brads evenly on both sides. I also use it to pierce around the outside of a circle for faux stitching or just the holes.
I love the idea of plastic canvas!! My brads are hardly ever completely even, too, and it drives me crazy. I'll have to buy a sheet when I'm out next.
I use an old piece of Styrofoam (the packaging kind) for a piercing mat ... and I use an old compass (the sharp metal kind) for my piercing tool.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things I do that are mega-cheap, since I'm too cheap to buy most of the expensive tools, but I can't think of any more at the moment. If I think of them, I'll post again.
My cheap tool is from Dollar Tree. Those little grabber hair clips work great with the make up wedges (cut down) for inking stuff. I just roll the edges into the clip and have a nice rounded sponge dauber. For $2 I have over 90 daubers. Good news is you only buy the clips once!
I use a needle pointed tweezer from the make up section at the store ALOT. I couldn't get those craft ones that the arms cross over each other to work and some other craft tweezer were just to hard to close around things. Cost vary but mine was under $3.00 and works great for me. Use it to place bling, dew drops, die cut letters or any small emblishment, mini glue dots exactly where I want it, the brad 'feet' into the hole, pull a ribbon tail through the loop, enlarge a hole a tiny bit, could be used to pierce a hole in a pinch - the list goes on.
I kept my needles, pens, and push pens for clearing out the bottle openings (glue, stickles, etc) in a little test tube. When I went to get them, I had to dump them out and get the one I want.
A while back I bought a set of 2" foam letters and the center of the "O" is a nice little 1/2" tall circle that I use for a pin cushion. I attached it to my desk top with a snot dot so it doesn't move.
Now when I want a needle or pin, I just pull it out of the "pin cushion" - no more sorting. Really cheap -- as in free since I already bought the letter set.
my favorite 'Cheap Finds'
i used pillboxes from the $1 store to hold all my brads and eyelets.
a pack of pre-folded card blanks and envelopes- 25 cards at the $1 store
and a metal ruler and X-Acto knofe (wel ok a $1 store boxcutter)
My cheap tool is from Dollar Tree. Those little grabber hair clips work great with the make up wedges (cut down) for inking stuff. I just roll the edges into the clip and have a nice rounded sponge dauber. For $2 I have over 90 daubers. Good news is you only buy the clips once!
What a great idea; gotta love $ Tree.
Hope this one hasn't been posted yet: I cut a notch in an old credit card and now use it as my edge distresser. It's good enough for me.
I use a piece of fun foam as piercing mat and have cut paper borders using scallop and wave scissors so that I can pierce a scallop/wave border anytime I want.
I use a chopped down self healing cutting mat in my cuttlebug, I use it with a C plate for cutting shapes etc out, saves my B plates for embossing and they don't get all bent up. Since I can get two mats out of an a4 cutting map it is about a 4th of the price of the cuttlebug B plates.
A needle. LOL I love using it to apply glue to the smallest areas of embellishments and I also use it to clean the tip of my zip dry glue.
I use tooth picks for appying glue. :lol: I'm so glad to hear others use small items to do that too - I sometimes thought I might have a wierd way of doing it.
I like to have a spattered ink look on some things and some of the daubers or brushes don't give me the look I want so I came up with something that works for me. I cut a little bunch of bristles from my broom, rubberbanded them together nice and tight and use this for dabbing on the ink pad and then the paper works great and cleans up pretty easy by rubbing it back and forth on a baby wipe.
I use acrylic packinging material (same as the Stampin' Up containers) to make templates for the card sizes I use most. A permanent marker is used to show various indentations for layers, and I note in a list the dimensions of each layer by 1/8" increments. The template overlay lets me check to make sure that it best suits the stamps layout I want. I then know exactly what dimensions to trim each of the layers. I have them for A-2, half sheet, 5 x 7 (my favorite), legal, and several other sizes I have lots of envelopes for.
I use tooth picks for appying glue. :lol: I'm so glad to hear others use small items to do that too - I sometimes thought I might have a wierd way of doing it.
Me too! Toothpicks are great when glue and/or glitter go .where they shouldn't
I was watching a video and when the person went to position her brads she had a little sheet of squared holed plastic.
Yes i know it was the plastic canvas we had as children for cross stitching, it's about $1.50 a sheet, and guess what my children have some in their craft box.
It gives you equal spaces to be able to place your brads in a line or diagonally.
:p :p :p
I always hated the fact mine were never quiet spaced in a line or at equal distances... but no longer.
so who else has a cheap tool tip.
Do you have a link for the video???? I would love to watch it!
my favorite cheap tools are my "grabbers" i put polymer clay on the end of a chopstick and a toothpick. It makes it very easy to pick up rhinestones and other small objects, put adhesive on them and have precision placement abilities. Have you ever tried to pick up a ,itty bitty or larger, and adhere it exactly where you wanted it with your fingers? I don't know about you but I tend to get adhesive all over the rhinestone. My grabbers work great.
I tried using tweezers, really I did but I managed to shoot more rhinestones across the room than i was actually able to get placed.
__________________ Shellie G
Aspire to be a better person than you were yesterday
Do you have a link for the video???? I would love to watch it!
Pam
This isn't a video, but GinaK explains using plastic canvas to do paper piercing. Go HEREand scroll down past the Koh-i-noor instructions. She carries these pieces in her store.
You can use the same inst. for brad placement. :-D
May God bless, Sandi
__________________ StormyElf'd '07Humble Ink Smears If at first you don't succeed, talk to God! Then, go put on your big girl panties!
I use a map pin (the sort of push pin that has a "handle" rather than a flat top - not sure if you guys call it the same as we do in the UK) as my piercing tool and an old mouse mat as my piercing mat.
As others have mentioned, I also have cut down self-healing mats to use as plates in my die cutter (I used a large one that had got too tatty and worn on my desk top) and use a needle to place small dots of adhesive. My stamp positioner is also made of lego bricks
I use regular scissors as a distressing tool - just hold the blades slightly open to get a V shape. I like the idea of the notch in the old credit card though, must give that a go!
Free crafting tools are great. I use those fake credit cards for many things , scraping off stickers , burnishing , spreading glue etc. Cereal boxes to make templates. Used the wood handle from a sponge paintbrush and inserted a needle for a tool to use with heat gun when embossing.Clear peanutbutter jar to hold all those tools you can never find when you need em.Advertizing magnet sheets for holding those nesties.
A piece of gutter covering, can be cut down and used to give texture in any die cut machine. It is available in many patterns, different stores carry different ones, and it's cheap.
For my craft sheets... I use Reynolds wrap Non Stick Foil. Nothing sticks to this... I have embossed things on this and lifts right off. I have pour my UTEE and have stamped right into the Utee right on the foil. Let cool... Lifts right off. If the foil gets messy or whatever...throw away and tear off another sheet. Works great and have been using this for years now.
Robin
For my craft sheets... I use Reynolds wrap Non Stick Foil. Nothing sticks to this... I have embossed things on this and lifts right off. I have pour my UTEE and have stamped right into the Utee right on the foil. Let cool... Lifts right off. If the foil gets messy or whatever...throw away and tear off another sheet. Works great and have been using this for years now.
Robin
Fantastic idea Robin............thanks for sharing! I have some of that and I will start using it!!!
I use plain white felt to do my sponging. I bought a cheap 8 1/2 x 11 piece at Walmart, and I just cut off little squares as needed. I usually just wrap it around my index finger; it's thick enough that the ink doesn't bleed through. I got the idea after seeing those Tim Holtz alcohol ink applicators - they're just felt rectangles attached to a wooden stamp handle.
I love this thread! Thanks for starting it. My favorite super-cheap tool is a big white crayon left over from when my daughter had those toddler crayons. I use it to pick up rhinestones, Dew Drops, and other small, flat embellishments. The rhinestone sticks just enough to the crayon and then releases when you've got it where you want it on your project.
It would have to be my corsage pin that I keep stuck in the edge of a basket on my craft desk. It is the handiest thing ever! I have scraped away misplaced stickles, kept stickles flowing, used it for paper piercing and brad placement.
what a cheap tool! What's yours.
