A to Z Challenge - 2019 - T is for Tools

For the letter "T" in the 10th Annual A to Z Challenge I am talking about tools.  Every good craftsperson has their tools.  My husband was a mechanic and he has a garage full of tool boxes with multiple varieties of tools.  The neighbors come by asking for this size wrench or that type screwdriver and he has them all.

I have my tools too.  Of course I have the standard pens, markers, scissors, ink, stamps, all that stuff.  I showed them a little bit in my post for the letter "S" last year when I talked about the Scrapbooking section of Michaels.  These are a few of my more specialized tools. 

The first is my Slice machine.  Many (most) people have the Cricut, Sizzix or a version of them to make their die cuts and alphabet letters.  The Slice machine came out about 10 years ago or so and I was so excited to get one.  It is a portable machine whereas some of the others are not.  I can use the Slice to cut out lots of different letters and shapes for almost any theme.  It comes with a design card that plugs into the machine.

Design cards

 Once the card is inserted you have lots of options to choose from.  I used this guitar to make the guitar embellishment I talked about yesterday in the "Special Order" CD Music mini.

It goes from 2 to 4 inches.

 Each card comes with a booklet that shows all the designs you can make.

 These are two journal tags I made using elements from the Slice design cards and then stamped some lines on them for the writing.

Unfortunately the company that made the Slice went out of business and the Slice is no longer supported by anyone.  I will be sad if something happens to mine.

We R Memory Keepers is a company that makes a lot of punch boards that you can use to make things as well.  This one makes envelopes, bows and boxes.  On the inside it tells you what size paper to use for whatever size envelope, bow or box you want to make and then just by punching the paper at certain points and then scoring and folding, you have your finished product.  I haven't used the bow or box feature much yet but the envelopes I use a lot with my cards.

This one makes different sizes of frames for pictures or whatever. 

 This one makes party favor bags.  I made the orange one below.

 I have a lot of regular punches too.  Some are to punch things like flowers or leaves and some are border punches to use for making pretty borders on the page or edges on cards.

This one will take a 6 inch piece of paper and turn the edges into really detailed finishes.

This is another type of border maker from Creative Memories.  I am a consultant for them so of course I have to try out the product, right?  Next to it are two sticker makers.  You put small pictures or embellishments through them and they turn them into stickers.  

Sticker makers

Another tool I use a lot, mainly in my scrapbooking, is the stencils from Lea France.  Creative Memories just started making some too.  These stencils allow you to put a lot of pictures on one page.  I showed some examples of how I used them two years ago in the A to Z when I showcased my concert scrapbook album.  Check A for Adele.  I just got the one called "Cruise" and I'm looking forward to using that one!

 Of course there is the Fairy Tales castle!  How cool to use that for pictures of a Disneyland vacation!

The last example of tools I'll show are the templates from Paper Wishes that I used to make the gift card holders I talked about in the letter "G."  

This one made the Christmas holders

This one made the ice cream and mug holders

Those are some of my tools.  Do you use special tools in your work?  Is there a scrapbooking tool you think I NEED to try?  Lemme know.  

Quick aside, using the "tools" on WP I see I have at this moment 146 "followers" on my Word Press version of this blog and 23 on Blogger.  Can I get to 150 and 25 before the end of the A to Z?  Hope you come back tomorrow for the letter "U."