Friday Challenge to Myself - Dig In and Scrap from your Stash!

I have been pouring over my years and years of collective Scrapbooking and Rubber Stamping Stash over the last while and feeling a little overwhelmed. 

I'd started out with Creative Memories,and somewhere along the way I bought out a friend who was leaving her demonstratorship behind so I ended up with a raft of paper. At the same time I had signed on as a demonstrator with Topline Creations and bought a lot of clearance paper and toppers in addition to other purchases - which weren't many as I always found them a little too pricey for me. In any case, it wasn't a big surprise when TLC changed hands again and became Breezy Designs and no longer had demonstrators as we had known them. 

I'd been collecting Provocraft Memory Blocks and Costco Paper Blocks as well as cleaning up on fibres, eyelets and other embellishments on Ebay - I now had 2 Sizzix machines and a variety of dies. 

By this time I'd discovered Rubber Stamping, and had become well versed in all of the pretty colors and began to immerse myself in them as well. I was almost 4 years into Stamping before I signed on as a demonstrator, but I was only buying for myself so I told myself it didn't really matter if I used other things on my cards -- after all they were MINE right? I also consoled myself that I didn't have to buy any new paper because I already had so much - but that argument only works up until the point that you want to coordinate all the pretty inks, pastels and such with the paper to match it and some of those long collected favorites aren't getting you quite so excited anymore..  It really is a bit of an emotional roller coaster once you get going..  ;)

When I recently decided to transition to teaching a little more, and holding some classes and workshops I began wondering how I would make use of what I affectionately dubbed my Crafter's warehouse. So many people I've met were of the mindset of only being able to use the products for your particular company. I'd always been of the mindset that if you add tuna or peas to Kraft Dinner, isn't it still Kraft Dinner? But my opinion is not the norm in the Scrap and Stamp world.. and now that I'm doing more workshops - the idea is to use "our" products to show off what we have and get others as enthusastic as we are about it all. This makes sense, right?

So anyhow, I've been lamenting about how I should go about making use of some of my stash...  I've been thinking that if our house ever caught on fire I'd be in a world of hurt because all this paper is certainly not going to help my case in that event. I don't want to waste the paper - I've got so many pretty vellums and mulberry paper, card stocks, punches, dies, buttons, brads, eyelets.. it seems such a waste not to use them.. 

So I challenged myself today that each week, I am going to dig into my stash and make at least ONE card, made entirely from items in my stash. I thought that this would be a great way to try out ideas and techniques before doing the samples for my boards and such.. Ultimately, I thought it would be fun.. so off I went.. 

Today I also decided to tackle a barrier I've been facing and that's that there is so much stuff to choose from much that I haven't played with in ages that I can't decide what to use so I end up feeling overwhelmed and nothing gets made. So here's what I did.. 

I chose the first 3 things that I laid eyes on when I sat at the table. A box of Tins that house some of the dies I've pre-cut with my Sizzix, A ziploc bag of buttons I bought online but hadn't sorted into my bins, and one of my bins of Fiskars paper edgers. 

As you can see I used the paper edgers to corner round the white paper for my Mat. I arranged and glued my buttons on the bottom of the page and then took 3 teddy bear die cuts from my stash and after playing with several colors I chose 3 yellow ones to match the button. I wanted to Jazz them up a little so I thought I'd try a couple of techniques. 

On one, I took a sponge dauber and sponge painted the one teddybear blue. The second, I took another dauber and used my pastel/chalk to color in the bear, and the last, I used my blender pen to color the bear in. I thought it would be fun to show the same element done 3 different ways and was pretty happy with how it turned out. 

I took one o my clear mount stamp sayings (not SU) and stamped just under the bears. I thought that the words smudged just a little but maybe it's just me being picky because I've gotten spoiled by my SU stuffs.. but the idea here was to use some of my "old" stash, rather than digging into the new.. 

So here's what I came up with.. I'm home solo this weekend - the boys are off to see the Nascar Race in Pocono so I'll have some more to share.. Let me know what you think