Use What You Have

We're all guilty of filling a cart and buying the latest and greatest stamps and dies on the market.  When was the last time you focused on using what you have?  I've been doing just that.  I won't lie, I did place a couple of orders this past weekend, but that's another story.

This past weekend I spent some time focusing on stamp sets with sentiments in them that I’ve never used. You know what I’m talking about, the sets that we all have with one or two sentiments that have never been inked.  I buy a set for one or two main ideas and then I never use the ones that weren’t for the project I did. So I blew the figurative dust off and started creating some super cute cards with them.  

I often use stencils and ink blending when I’m trying out new ideas. Less waste if I don’t love the end result, plus it gets my creative juices flowing when I get inky.  I also tend to use up stray bits on the studio table when I’m just playing with no set direction in mind.  You might also notice that I seem to have also found a sudden love of yellow while creating these.  Nearly half of them ended up yellow, mostly by accident. 

These two were the first cards I created.  For the first card, I used a circle stencil and moved it as I added layers of ink to create this pattern.  Did a bit of a shifter effect without a shifter stencil.   I used three shades of yellow distress inks, a stamp set from Simon Says Stamp and, a retired die from Technique Tuesday.

For the second card, I used a print technique, spriting the stencil with water and pressing the card panel on top to use the ink that would have otherwise ended up on my microfiber rag.  Then I used the same sun die and stamp.

I had a thing for dots as I was making these, as you'll see.  Card number four was larger dots, created with some of the pink distress inks.  The sentiment is from an older Simon Says Stamp set.  I also added a bit of Tonic Crystal Glaze.

Card five, still big dots and the same sentiment, but I opted to add a bit of orange and layer the inks to eliminate the white space. 

Onto card five, still with the big dot stencil, this time with green ink onto some green paper.  Added a bit of washing, popped up the sentiment, added a bit of gold thread and an enamel dot for embellishment.

For card six I used the same print technique from card two, to create the green part of this background.  After the print was dry I lined the stencil up and inked the circle with a shade of blue distress ink.  I pulled a stitched circle die cut from my stash to add the sentiment.  Embellished with a butterfly die cut and some matching blue gems.  

Card seven is the same technique as card six, with similar embellishments and sentiment addition.  

This one is probably my least favorite, but it's card eight in my Use What You Have day of creating.  I used a number of sentiment stamps to create the background.  I added a few hearts to break up the yellow background, as well as a simple sentiment.  

The final card of the day is card nine.  Another stencil background, but I only used a portion of the stencil.  I added a yellow butterfly die cut and stamped a sentiment from an Avery Elle sentiment set.

I'm not sharing any specific product links.  The point of this post is to encourage you to use your stuff, and stop the buy.   If you feel the need to do some shopping in search of similar products, please consider using my affiliate links to Simon Says Stamp and Scrapbook.com.