Crystal and Rhinestone Embellishments: A Hot Trend in Scrapbooking

Crystals and rhinestones have been popular jewelry components for years. Lately, it's been trendy to add sparkly accents to jeans, t-shirts, and other garments too. Crystals and rhinestones have been a recent fashion industry favorite. Nowadays crystals and rhinestones aren't just used to dress up your favorite outfits; they are one of the hottest trends in scrapbooking too!

If you'd like to try using some crystals and rhinestones in your scrapbooking layouts, you have a variety of choices. Popular designs include crystal frames, crystal flourishes, crystal swirls, crystal borders, crystal flower centers, rhinestone flowers, and various other shapes formed from crystals and rhinestones.

Some Popular Manufacturers of Crystal and Rhinestone Embellishments For Scrapbooking:

Heidi Swapp Bling:

Heidi Swapp is one of the queens of bling. Her trend-setting embellishments helped popularize the trend for crystals and rhinestones in scrapbooking. One lovely example is the Heidi Swapp "Chandelier crystals," which are intended to decorate scrapbook albums, altered art projects, or any other surface where you need a bit of sparkle. Heidi Swapp also manufactures a variety of self-adhesive crystal embellishments including crowns, frames, borders, cherries, and others.

KaiserCraft Rhinestones:

KaiserCraft manufactures a variety of different rhinestone embellishments for scrapbooking. Their designs include basic shapes, flowers, arrows, stars, spirals, butterflies, and hearts.

Crystals By Prima Marketing:

Prima Marketing manufacturers multiple collections that feature bling. One popular collection is known as "Say It In Crystals". Another is "Center Kisses"; these are intended to be used as centers for Prima's faux flowers, but they can be used separately if you prefer.

Rhinestone Buttons By Jenni Bowlin Studio:

Jenni Bowlin's rhinestone buttons are fabulous! They are fancy vintage-style decorative buttons with rhinestone centers. Unlike other buttons, you don't need to get out your needle and thread to use them; Jenni Bowlin's rhinestone buttons are self-adhesive, and you use them just like you would use a sticker.

Tips For Using Rhinestones and Crystals In Your Scrapbooking Layouts:

You can layer items overtop of crystal and rhinestone embellishments. If you want to use a Prima flower in your layout, a rhinestone flourish can be affixed below it to resemble the flower's stem and leaves. Crystal flourishes can be allowed to peek out from under photos or other embellishments.

Plan your entire layout before adhering your rhinestone and crystal embellishments. Use a sketch if necessary. Unless there is something you plan to attach on top of them, the rhinestones and crystals should be the last details you add; if you attach them last, you can move them around and make sure they are positioned exactly right before you stick them down.

Rhinestone frames can be used to accent photos, journaling, ephemera, or other details that you want to highlight.

The old adage, "Less is more", holds true for scrapbooking with rhinestones and crystals. Resist the temptation to overload on too much sparkle. For starters, the cost adds up; crystals and rhinestones are expensive. You could easily overspend if you add too many crystal and rhinestone embellishents to one layout. Besides that, too much bling could compete with your photos. If you want to focus to be on the photos and not the sparkle, go easy on the crystals and rhinestones, and use them as accents rather than focal points.

Rhinestones and crystals make excellent embellishments for clear acrylic albums.

Resources:

Click here to see more hot new trends in scrapbooking.
Click here to buy crystal and rhinestone scrapbooking embellishments for clear albums.
Click here to visit Heidi Swapp's Web Site.
Click here to visit Jenni Bowlin's Web Site.