Slide Mounts & Ribbon

Some people collect page sketches - I collect techniques. This month I used a simple one I had never used before - tying a slide mount on with a ribbon. It is a great way to add depth to a layout without adding a lot of bulk. One of my first stops when I visit Scrapbooks Plus is always the ribbon rack at the front of the store. Ribbons these days come in such a wide variety of patterns that it is an easy and inexpensive way to add a bit of fun to a project. Using a slide mount is a great technique by itself. It allows you to focus attention on a small picture - or a small detail of a larger picture.

My altered item this month was a picture frame that I picked up at a craft store - one of those wooden frames with a nice flat wide edge and a small opening for a picture. My goal was to make it look like a scrapbook page, which to me meant I had to have more than one picture because I rarely do a layout with just one! I combed thru my stash and found that I had a slide mount in exactly the same rich golden tones as the Anna Griffin papers and I was ready to get started.

I traced the frame onto the back of the patterned paper and cut it out. I just used regular old Elmers glue to attach it and a brayer to get the bubbles out. I positioned the slide mount so it was overlaping the picture opening a little bit and used thumbtacks on the back of the frame to hold the ribbon in place and tied the knot. The bird in the upper left was hand cut and added so that it also overlapped the opening, and then I popped on the dimensional flower sticker. Last up was the lettering. Of course I did not have the letters I needed, but I found that it was really easy to alter the wooden letters with a pair of wire cutters. (The "l" used to be a capital "T" and the "y" started out its life as the letter "X".) I used a wood stain to get the right color, and then added them with some Memory Mount glue.

What technique have you been waiting to try?