Short of ribbon, no worries!

What do you do when you need to tie lots of ribbon to a project and when you're short on ribbon? Well, I for one, don't panic. Here's a trick for making small pieces of ribbon go a long way:

Instead of tying all the ribbon to the project - tie one ribbon and then lay shorter strips of ribbon across the knot and knot twice again to secure. You'll get the bunch of ribbon look you want but with less ribbon than you really have in hand.

So, now you know you can use scraps of ribbon, instead of consigning them to the rubbish bin, bag them in small zip lock bags for use on your next project.

Adding dimension to craft projects

One of the biggest challenges when crafting paper projects such as cards is adding dimension but still ensuring the project can be mailed or a mini book can shut. For this reason I try to avoid using a lot of metal accents that aren't flat or things that will poke through the envelope.

However, I love foam dots. A few foam dots can lift an accent off the page and make it all look so much more interesting. It seems that just the smallest shadow that they provide makes items look like they're stacked. Foam dots also travel well - when they're squashed down the pop back up.

They work well with stickers, simply add the foam dots then dust the remainder of the sticker with talcum powder to remove the 'stick' then adhere the sticker to the card with the foam dots.
When you're stacking lots of flowers on a scrapbook layout or a card you can add dimension to the grouping by using foam dots to lift some of the flowers higher. This technique lets you add lots of less expensive sticker flowers and intersperse them with some more expensive embellishments and get good mileage out of all of them.