Product Playground 2: Super crafty fun for shut-ins. ;)

Okay, so I'm not really a shut-in, I'm certainly not a go-out either. My spine gave me a bit of a break on Saturday and I took the opportunity to go scrap with Teresa, my silly-fun-also-a-francophile-like-me friend and Creative Memories Consultant. (Make her rich. Shop her site.) I finally finished the mini album I was making for my friend Darcy. Yep, the pics were from March and it took me this long to finish them all. Considering I made three albums, that's not so bad. I made a big album for me:

One for Dan and Steve, whose house we visited in Sonoma:

Yep, that's their dog, Piper. I love photographing animals, so my albums have a disproportionate number of animals photos in them. Anyway, I finished the entire set of pics when I completed the last mini album:

Hooray! We just had glitter week in the Product Playground class at Big Picture Scrapbooking, hence this album ended up sparkly sparkly sparkly! If you know me, you know I thrive on glitter, so this week was my favorite. I went nuts. If you skip over to my other blog you can see a set of cards I carefully glittered using a weensie glue pen and superfine glitter. I love how they came out. The cover, above, was glittered using Stickles. I began my relationship with Stickles by being completely opposed to them. I thought they were just a crappy glitter glue that couldn't hold a candle to the real thing. But lo! I had apparently bought a defective bottle, which the lovely ladies at Archivers were nice enough to not only exchange, but to check each new bottle on their shelf in an effort to replace it, discovering that the entire batch of that color was defective. Once that problem was solved, they also showed me that I was using them incorrectly, holding the tip away from the paper and letting it glop on like a thick worm. Touching the tip to the paper (or nearly so) was the key and now I am addicted to these neat little bottles. I get all excited about what color I'm going to get next time I can, choosing the new one long before I finally get it. Last week I obtained the long dreamed of "green". Now I'm obsessed with the new "Holly" one that is green with wee little flecks of red. Oh yeah! It's xmas card time!

I still don't think Stickles will ever replace the real thing when it comes to glitter (see the super sparklerific tree, above, made using Stampin Up glitter and crystal effects and Doodlebug superfine glitter, but they are an easy way to play with the sparkly stuff when you're in a situation where you don't want to make a mess (nod to Jen K. and her studio floor. :)) or if you're in a hurry (though the drying time is much longer than with real glitter.)

Oh! And on the subject of glitter, I had a new "find" this week: Creative Memories Precision glue pens are my new favorite glitter adhesive. I know I've spent a lot of time extoling the virtues of Quickie Glue pens, but they shy in comparison. I've been converted. The CM ones are a bit more generous with the glue, allowing more glitter to stick to your project, and they are just as easy to use as the Quickies. I think they are bit more expensive, though they appear to hold a *lot* more glue, so even if you use more, my hypothesis is that it will still last longer. I'll have to get back to you on that, but in the mean time, give them a try.