Fuse Tool Cards

Hi everyone.  This is Charlotte C visiting with you today, thanks to Sheila, to tell you about my experience with the Fuse tool.   I so much wanted this tool when it became the rage a few months back and my husband kindly bought the whole kit for me for my birthday.  That was around August/September.  Here we are in January and I’m just getting to test out all that this tool is touted to do.  I did use some of it when it first arrived when I was finishing up a scrapbook – I made little sequin pockets and added them to my pages here and there, along with fusing some of the fusible embellishments that came with the kit. 

And what a kit it is.  

 

I put together a few cards to share with you.  Everything you see here was made using only what came in the kit, except for the pink polka-dot heart card.  For that I used sequins from my stash because I preferred the colors I had to what was in the kit on that particular card.   Following the guide that comes with the kit, I made my little sequin pocket first and fused it to the bottom of the window card, like so.

Then I folded that up and fused it to the back of the window and it's now the inside of my card.

Next I embellished the outside of the window cards and decorated some of the other card bases.  

 Here’s what I learned.  When it’s time to fuse the bottom part to the inside of the card, it takes a few strokes of the tool back and forth before everything seals.  I also preferred the narrow cut tip for applying embellishments to the card, and rather than wait for the tool to cool to change the tip, I used a plier, held the tip with it very gently and turned the tool till the tip released.  Then I could screw in what I wanted to use.  But note:  you have to wait a few minutes for the new tip to heat up before it works.   The base card is made of a special material that allows you to fuse to it.   I’m not crazy about how it feels.  Also, there’s a limited amount of embellishments in the kit that I myself will use on a card and I did use my Cricut (of course) to add a sentiment to the front of some, as you can see.

Of course you can take any size page protector and use the Fuse tool to create custom pockets, whether for photos or if you do Project Life pages.  And now the rage seems to be pocket letters.  Don’t get me started on that!  What challenges me is that whatever pocket I create for one side has to work on the reverse side, which means my photos have to be the same size and shape.  Plus, you have to create openings to be able to insert your photos and you have to create a seal so that what you insert into the pockets stays put.  If I ever get that down pat, I’ll come back here and tell you about it.

Hope your new year has gotten off to a great start and I thank you for being with us today.