Review: Wagner Heat Gun HT3500

Check this out!  I have teamed up with the CSI Project to tell you about this gun.  I recently received a Wagner HT3500 digital heat gun to review and see how I liked it in my little scrapbooking world.  The HT3500 is the first digital heat gun introduced into the DIY market.   Here’s what I did with it:

I started out with this pretty dandelion stamp from Stampendous and used a Ranger embossing pad to stamp it onto my cardstock.

Then I dumped some Ranger clear embossing powder onto it while it was wet.

After pouring the excess back into the jar, it looks like a frosted dandelion.

And then after heating it up with the heat gun and melting the embossing power, it looks shiny and pretty!

All in all, it’s pretty neat.  It works great.  Touch-pads activate 12 different temperature settings from 250° to 1350° F, so you can set the temp for whatever temperature your particular project needs.  I left mine where it was when I took it out of the box, but if I were going to strip some paint I would turn it up obviously.

A cool feature that it has is there’s no off button.  When you’re done, you put it in cool down mode and set it down wherever (upright) and it will cool itself down and then shut off. 

I don’t know if this is a standard thing with heat guns or not, but for my particular project in the scrapbooking studio I didn’t like this feature because I have paper everywhere and didn’t like sitting that thing down on my counter space for fear of knocking it over (because I’m accident prone).  I do like this gun better than the one that I’m using which is specifically for scrapbooking (embossing) because it heated up faster and didn’t take as long to melt the embossing powder.  However, I do think it would also be nice if I were melting some paint or doing another project with it.  Stripping paint is actually what I’m going to try next!

Wagner’s website says it’s ideal for removing multiple types of paint, remove flooring, rusted bolts, thawing frozen pipes and much more.  I never thought about using it for rusted bolts!   Here’s a link to it on Amazon:  Wagner heat gun.  Now I’m off to do some stripping (paint!).

A very special mini scrapbook.

Here’s a project I did recently that was shown on Practical Scrappers yesterday.

My aunt asked me to make her this special little scrapbook.  She had written this little poem book type thing for my cousin (her nephew) for his 18th birthday.  He passed away unexpectedly a year later and she received this back from his mother as a keepsake.  She laminated it and has been carrying it around in her wallet ever since, but she wanted something more substantial so she asked me to do something with it. 

I used a 7Gypsies chipboard tag album that looked like this before I started:

 And I decorated with paper she picked out and then just prettied up the front.  Here’s the after:

 This is what she was carrying around:

I actually scanned all the little pages and printed them out onto white cardstock so she could keep the originals.  I covered every page (tag) in the album with black cardstock and just adhered my little pages in order to each one.

It’s a cute little poem, so I thought I would share the inner pages with you here.  If you can’t see them well enough, just click on each photo and give it a second to adjust and it will be just the right size.

 My aunt was so thrilled with this, and I was so happy to be able to give her a special keepsake of one of her nephews.

What do you think?

Christmas Cutie.

I know it’s past Christmas, but seriously how CUTE is the face on this kid? 

Summer was only 3 in this photo!

I used American Crafts cardstock, Imagination Project paper (distressed the edges around the way around), the tag with the year on it and the tag with the word Christmas on it are from Shabby Chic Tags (love them).  The trees are a digital stamp that I printed on white cardstock and cut out.  I can’t remember where they came from and I hate when that happens!  I think the jewels I put on it are from the $1 bin at Michaels (my favorite spot in Michaels- ha ha)  I also used GCD Studios black glitter letter stickers (LOVE) and a Fancy Pants glittery photo overlay.

Live Laugh Love.

This is the last page to the scrapbook I was hired to make of a little girl to wife.  This is her favorite photo from their engagement photo shoot, and I love it.  I used some chipboard embellishments from Echo Park (and others) and added Stickles to some of them to sparkle them up. 

(click any photos to see larger)

Oh! I forgot to show you the cover of the scrapbook.

When the customer gave it to me, it only had the flowers on it and instead of ribbon the binding was raffia that was pretty sad looking.  I changed that out to pretty pink satin ribbon, added the metal plaque and the chipboard butterflies (with straight pins for antennae)

and added Stickles just a tiny bit to the flowers for some sparkle. Yes, I like sparkle!

And that’s all she wrote!

Sweetheart.

I realized I still have 2 more pages to show you of the book I was hired to make of a little girl’s childhood to wife. 

How cute is she?

Fall and leaf layout and card inspiration

Practical Scrappers featured more fall projects on Thursday and my latest page for their design team was included.  Here it is:

I actually changed a couple things but am too lazy at this moment to take another photo for you.  ha ha

You can go over to the Practical Scrappers site and see some more fall inspiration here.

Fright Night Halloween mini scrapbook.

 This was a mini book I made as part of the design team over at Practical Scrappers for their post featuring Halloween projects.  You can see all the other cool stuff here.

(click to see details larger)

I recently made a cute little mini Halloween book with Summer’s trick or treating photos from back in 2006.  She was Little Bo Peep that year, and that was the last time she let me pick out her costume.  ha ha!

Here’s a closer view of the inside pages.  I used a lot of Stickles to make the candies and some of the pumpkins sparkly.  I also added googly eyes to the pumpkins and owl just to make it more fun.  Click on the photos to see the details better!

(check out her best friend’s costume…she was the bride of frankenstein and she looked AWESOME!)

(back cover)

What do you think?  Isn’t it cute?  I saw a really cute idea the other day of a mini album showing all of your kid’s costumes through the years, and I’m gonna make one of those really soon.  Love that idea.

Sympathy card using leaf doily.

I actually made this card LAST fall and just found it on my computer where it had been hiding all this time.  ha ha

I used leaf shaped paper doilies from the Dollar Tree store and stacked 3 of them on top of each other, though you can’t really tell unless you look from the side.  Just went very simple with this and stamped the sympathy sentiment with my Hero Arts stamp and attached a button with some jute string.  Easy and simple.

Using Glossy Accents.

I love this stuff.  It’s easy to apply, and it dries clear and hard and shiny and makes things prettier!

I recently worked on my daughter’s first grade schoolwork scrapbook and made my own embellishment of an apple.  I started out with a bare chipboard apple from Maya Road (I think).  Here’s the before shot:

I used some red ink to change the color of it.  That took a couple of coats of my ink pad.  I just colored the stem with a brown marker.

 Then I applied the Glossy Accents to make it shiny.  Check it out!

It’s so quick and easy!  Another thing I like to use it for is to apply it to a sticker and it turns it into an epoxy sticker, raised up a bit and shiny.   Do any of you use this for projects, and if so what for?

Friends are Good card.

I made this card recently for a friend who had done me a huge favor.

We recently had a feature on Practical Scrappers on using mist sprays and masking on cards, and this card was shown.  I used Tattered Angels glimmer mist to spray the white paper doily and turn it blue.

I tried to do a bunch of layering on this one, which hasn’t really been my style but I like to change things up a bit every now and again.  I also mixed old and new scrapbooking supplies together here.  The paper for the background is old, the blue glitter paper I used to punch out the butterfly is old.  The journaling block, the rub-on sentiment, and that pretty chipboard flower piece (Pebbles Inc) are new.

 
Pin It