This is a stick up!

Hello faithful Crop Suey-ers!! Time for another tutorial! This one is about making your own stick pin embellishments, using various items you already have in your stash as well as your punches! I know you have 'em and probably aren't using them much anymore. Am I right?

Your die cuts will work well for this too!

Other things you'll need are Floral pins like these ones. I found them at JoAnn's in the floral department. I know, go figure!?

They're long. Like 3" or so.

If you have needle-nose pliers with a cutting edge, or tin snips or even just an old pair of scissors that are already dull to cut the ball off the end, that would be good too.

Next thing to do is punch a bunch of the shape(s) you want to use. Punch them out of patterned paper for a real purty look. Once you've done that, you can use the adhesive of your choice to layer up several pieces of the same shape. I find that three layers is good.

Once they're stuck nice and firm and all squared up around the edges I lay them on wax paper or the back side of cutting mat (cuz I don't have a Splat Mat, as much as I wish I did) and cover the top surface with Glossy Accents or Diamond Glaze. Then you need to let them dry for awhile. If you don't wait long enough, you'll leave your fingerprints in the surface of the Diamond Glaze and they how will you get away with this crime??

This is a good time to add some sparkle in the form of glitter if you're into that sort of thing. If you're not, I totally know where you're coming from! This was sort of an exception for me - adding the glitter to the snowflakes. Sometimes you just have to make an exception to your firmly held principles.

Now it's time to turn on the hot glue gun. And pull out of your stash anything else you'd like to glue to the head of a pin for sticking on a card or a scrapbook page.

Things like small chipboard shapes (already finished with a pretty design), larger-ish metal brads (wiggle the backs until they break right off), plastic "button" shapes, or whatever strikes your fancy!

Right!? How cute are these!?

Now it's time to glue the pins on the back. Just like this. Not too hard.

Here's a few of the ones I made:

(Y'all can just ignore that glue strand that I didn't see until I looked at the pictures on my computer. Dang pesky glue strands.)

And here's a couple of examples where I used the stick pins to embellish a card or layout.

And you might remember this one from awhile back.

Thanks for STICKing around this long! I'd sure love to see what you make if you decide to try this little technique for yourself!!