Thrifty Thursday: Handmade Scrapbook Accents

I've shared with you that one of the ways I save money and make my scrapbook and paper crafting dollar stretch is to make my accents/embellishments myself. This also allows me to personalize the accents to fit the photos and memories.

The scrapbook layout photos below show you a few of my handmade elements including the painted title, and the paper pieced "track" at the bottom of the second page.

Because the paper had a bit of shadow in the background, this called "distress" to me, so I tore paper, inked, chalked, and sanded the title and second embellishment.

I used, vellum, more ink, tearing, and pewter eyelets to carry through my distressed/worn look for these pages.

Here is a close up of the title. I used Making Memories paint and foam alphabet stamps, and then I played will the alignment of the letters. Once I stamped the title, I tore the edges of the paper with the use of a ruler to make them more straight...typically I don't use the ruler as I'm usually going to the more random look.

Once I was finished and I had the look I was going for, I joined the title together with a pewter eyelet.

For this embellishment I took scraps from the photo mats I had cut and then cut the remainder into strips and then placed them in succession of color starting with the darkest blue and then working my way down and repeating.

I tore the vellum to continue my worn look and placed it in the center of my element to allow the same amount of the strips to show above and below the vellum.

For the cost of 3 eyelets, and scraps of paper that I was using for the photo mats, I was able to accent and embellish my layout. I certainly could have been more elaborate in my accents, but I was able to still draw attention to the photos and scrap on a budget!