Technique of the Month: Fibers
By Sara Naumann

Fibers are fabulous for scrapbooking—they're acid-free, soft (so they won't make an impression on the facing page), easy to work with and they come in wonderful colors so you can customize them to your layout.

What can you do with fibers, besides use them on a tag? Designer Arlene Peterson shows three ways to scrapbook with fabulous fibers.

Technique #1: Tag Art

Arlene says: Tags are a fun accent for decoration and one of the easiest ways to use fibers on a page (on this layout, those tags are also helping with my journaling!) Instead of putting fibers on each tag separately, I pulled them through all of the tags to create a simple border. This can be placed vertically or horizontally on your layout.

Supplies:

• Patterned Paper Pizazz®: Purple Happiness, Spattered Purple
• specialty Paper Pizazz®: Pastel Purple Vellum
• solid white paper
• tags: Mary Anne's Tag Art Cut-Outs™
• Paper Pizazz® Grape Jelly Fiber Pack
• purple and red decorating chalks: Craf-T Products

Technique #2: Accenting Slide Mounts

Arlene says: Before wrapping the slide mounts with fibers, I first covered them with patterned paper. To do this, apply glue to the slide mount, then place it onto the backside of a patterned paper. Use an x-acto® knife to cut around the outside and inside of the slide mount. I wrapped the slide mounts with silver fibers, using clear tape to secure the fibers to the backside. I attached the slide mounts to the page with foam tape to accommodate the bulkiness of the fibers. The embossed words are also attached to the page with foam tape.

Supplies:

• patterned Paper Pizazz®: Jacie's Vintage Papers
• two sheets of metallic silver Paper Pizazz®
• Paper Pizazz® Silver Fiber Pack
• Paper Pizazz® Square Slide Mount Treasures
• Paper Pizazz® Brushed Gold & Silver Fragments
• foam tape
• clear tape
• X-acto® knife

Technique #3: Fiber Borders

Arlene's Tip: Because the left side of the page has torn paper plus embossed charms, I wanted to add some balance to the layout with another border on the right hand side. Fibers added softness and gave a tone-on-tone look to the page; the gold charms coordinated with the mat and the border on the opposite side. It ends up creating a frame around the photo.

Supplies:

• patterned Paper Pizazz®: Words, Letters & Textured Papers
• metallic gold Paper Pizazz®
• Paper Pizazz® Hardware Punch-Outs™
• Paper Pizazz® Brushed Gold & Silver Fragments Cut-Outs™
• Paper Pizazz® Bubble Gum Fiber Pack
• foam tape

If you love fibers as much as Arlene, be sure to check out her source for inexpensive fiber collections. Paper Pizazz® Fiber Packs have 6' of six different fibers, all color coordinated in tone-on-tone shades. There's a variety of texture in different weights, from mohair and chenille to eyelash and ladder fibers. We think they're fabulous for tag art, scrapbook pages, altered books, card-making and journals. What will you use them for?