Playing Catch-Up - Recycling on Your Layouts

I don't know about you, but I'm always looking for ways to save money. One of the ways I do this is by reusing items in my home as often as I can, especially in my scrapbooking and memory keeping projects. And I don't know if you knew this, but this coming Saturday is National Scrapbooking Day - a whole day dedicated to this hobby we love. To combine the two interests (recycling and scrapbooking), Christy gave some old books of upholstery fabric swatches to Ashley Horton and me and asked us to make flowers out of them. If you are coming to the store's crop on Saturday, you might find a few of these flowers lying around (hint hint hint)...and if you're not coming, then you'll just have to settle for looking at my pictures here on the blog.

First up: My Supplies...fabric swatches, my BigShot (Any manual die-cutter will work. You just need to adjust the thickness of your cutting pads to account for the fabric and whatever dies you are using), flower or scalloped-circle dies (I used Spellbinders Nestabilities), and brads, stitching, Glubers, or whatever else you want to hold your flowers together (I used brads. Ashley finished others with stitching and other decoration, but you'll have to come to the store Saturday to see hers!)

When you cut your flowers, try to put your dies as close together as possible so you can get several flowers out of a single swatch.

Once you've cut your flowers, take them to your desk and find some supplies and a photo to match (Sorry the photo is sideways. My computer is refusing to rotate my pictures today).

One item I found on my desk is some leftover embellishment packaging. Seriously, how awesome are those acrylic casings that embellishments come in? I save nearly all of them. What can you do with them, you ask? So many, many options. You can stamp on them with staz-on ink (so you can move a stamped image around on your page and not worry about 'messing up' the page). You can die-cut them and make clear embellishments (Anybody remember Heidi Swapp's old Ghost shapes? Now you know how to make your own!). Or you can adhere other embellishments to them to use as a shiny, clear background (like I've done here with some My Mind's Eye embellishments).

And here's how I put it all together. In addition to the fabric flowers and clear packaging (sorry about the glare), I also used the B-side of a product code strip from a piece of patterned paper on this layout. So many recycled bits and pieces on here. Makes me happy.

I hope I've given you some ideas on how to recycle and save some money on your projects. Please feel free to put a link in the comments to any projects you may make using these ideas. And don't forget to enjoy National Scrapbook Day!

Supplies: fabric, Big Shot die-cutter, Spellbinders nestabilities, brown ink

- patterned paper - Dear Lizzy, Studio Calio, Echo Park, Lilly Bee

- letter stickers - Studio Calico

- brads - Bo Bunny

- washi tape - Hambly

- 'jeweled' frame - My Mind's Eye

- butterfly stickers - Studio Calico

- staple - Tim Holtz

- yellow acrylic heart - Heidi Swapp

Playing Catch-Up - Playing with New My Mind's Eye

Hello, World!

It's the first Thursday of the month, which means it's time for my regularly-scheduled blog post! I know you've all been waiting with baited breath, right? Lol.Anyhow, I hope everyone has had a chance to check out the new store location. Personally, I love it. It's closer to my house, it's well-stocked, and it's closer to my house (have I mentioned this already?) - which means more opportunities to shop and buy all the new products that are coming in. Remember all those lovely pictures I showed from CHA in January? Well, I have good news for you: the Winter CHA releases are starting to hit store shelves! And ScrapHappy has a lot of it! Yeah for enabling! When I was there last week, I was able to pick up some of the new Basic Grey and Echo Park lines, in addition to some of Rhonna Farrer's lines for My Mind's Eye.

First up, a few layouts for you to look at: Baa Baa Baby Jesus is a layout about my youngest and her friends before they sang in our church's Children's Christmas Program and the sheep song they sang. I wish I could convey the hilarity of their performance. But at least I have this layout to remember it by.

This next layout uses a quote from Dr Seuss. October Afternoon offered the quote as a free Silhouette svg file for easy cutting. I stamped the butterflies with a Jenni Bowlin stamp then layered the quote over it. The people shapes are Studio Calico wood veneers, and the kitty button is from October Afternoon.

And finally, a new magnet board that can be used for everyday messages and note-taking. I cut the days of the week on my Silhouette and inked them with grey ink before Mod-Podging them to the board. The magnets themselves are recycled from my Love Notes magnet board that I showed you at Valentine's Day. All the supplies are available at ScrapHappy.

I hope you've enjoyed the projects today. Let us know if you have any requests or questions.

- Cori