Use It!

Hi again! How is your week going? Mine is going ok, we are still waiting to exchange though which is very frustrating. We have now got to the point that we've packed enough just to be annoying. You know when you think you've left out the most important items that you need like storage containers for cooking and certain utensils, only to open the cupboard and find there's nothing in it! Well that's where we're at right now! One thing's for sure though none of my card goodies have been packed yet. They are staying out until the very last minute!!

I don't know if you know of Rae Barthel's work, but I love it. It's always fresh, bright and not over complicated. I can sometimes put too much on my cards, but she always seems to get it just right. Well, she has just started a great challenge blog, it's called 'Use It!'


The idea is that you use up your stash instead of dashing out to buy more. She has just held her very first challenge which has this basic recipe;

• Use one of your fave papers from your stash (what fun that was digging out some old bits!)
• Use something (anything) that you have never used before (well that should have been hard, but naughty little ole me had quite a lot to choose from in that category... whoops!)
• Use some ribbon (easy peasy - I lurve ribbon)
  
• Use a button (now a friend of mine absolutely hates buttons on cards, she thinks they are awful, so I'm not sure she will be liking this one!)
  

Well, I've been thinking that sometimes my cards are a bit dated, so I decided that I wanted to try and make my next card a bit more fun. I also wanted to do something with black, and colour because I do SO like my colour. Anyway, here's what I came up with...



I cut out squares in black card and the Basic Grey paper. Using my Stamp-a-ma-jig I then stamped out a flower using a set I bought about 2 or 3 years ago from a company called 'Blonde Moments' (see my sidebar for link). I love this flower set, it's really fab. I coloured the flower in using my Copics and added some white to the flowers using my Sakura pen. I then stamped the word 'flower'. I then rounded all of the right hand corners for a bit of a change. I inked the edges on the BG paper and the white card used for the flower image.

I found a little dotty button in my button stash and threaded through a scrap of pink ribbon. I then added some black and white gingham ribbon (still trying to keep the black thing going on) and a little piece of pink ribbon to lift the colour a little and match with the ribbon in the button.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, it's colourful (although I'm not sure the photo is actually showing the actual colours, they are a bit brighter in real life). I'm also really pleased that I FINALLY used that stamp set. I often look at it but never quite get around to making anything with it, so thanks Rae for the challenge, it's a great idea using up your old stash!

Have a good evening. I'm off to bed now! Sweet dreams ♥