PaperTraders Art: Product Spotlight: Flower Soft

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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Product Spotlight: Flower Soft

The moderators at Paper Traders thought that our followers might be interested in an occasional product review for some of the many tools a "mixed media" artist might use. We do not receive any kind of incentive for the products we feature; this is just a little insight on random products that we have tried.

For our first product spotlight, I wanted to share my experience with a fun product called Flower Soft. I first discovered this stuff a couple of years ago when I attended a Scrapbook expo in Colorado. My friend and I had lots of fun doing their make-and-take and I bought one container of their Heather color, which I shared with my mom. Even though the containers are small, there is A LOT of product in each one - they really pack it in and, because it's a flexible foam type product, it's easy to flake up into a huge springy pile of the stuff. For every color that I've purchased since (and I now have about a dozen different ones), I have split all of them with my mom and there is still plenty for each of us to play with.

So, what is Flower Soft and how would you use it? This product is kind of like a flock but the tiny pieces appear to be some kind of spikey synthetic, like tiny pieces of foam. It comes in a small plastic container full of colored sprinkles - available in lots of colors, including solids, mixed colors, metallics, etc. I really love the sparkly snow of Polar White! Their website says that it is acid free so it should be safe for all of your archival projects. I think that it adds a terrific plant-like texture to my art projects. Here is a matchbox shrine where I used several colors of Flower Soft to imitate the leaves and petals for different seasons:

When I purchased this product, they tried to sell me a special adhesive but I have found that Tacky glue works just fine. And that's something most of us always keep on hand. Each container sells for around $6 in the US but they also sell in other countries as well. I have seen this product in several of our local independent scrapbooking shops. Here's a link to their website showing the available colors: http://www.flower-soft.us.com/Cart/EC-Categories.php?CategoryID=67

If you're looking for something fun and different to add unique texture to your projects, I recommend trying Flower Soft.

And if you love this product as much as I do, feel free to comment and leave a direct link to a project where you used Flower Soft so we can all see the various uses for it.

Thanks!
Beckie Holso