Tuesday 22 July 2014

Fall In Love With Your Old Stash Items Again

Do you have items in your stash that you feel like you have fallen out of love of?
At one stage, you purchased because you liked something about it, but now you have forgotten what ever that was. And now you are stuck with these products that you don't know what to do with them, but don't want to feel like you have wasted your money, either.

Well, my name is Carlie Hamilton, and I am determined to use my stash, even those items I no longer love!

In this post I am going to share a few ideas I have to help you to fall in love with your old stash items again.


Alter It To Make It Feel New

With this technique, get your old embellishments and change it so that it feels new again. Cover it with washi tape, or paint it to change it's colour. This is great with things such as chipboard and more. By changing the product's colour, you can turn an obviously outdated product to something that is more in line with your style today.

Another technique that you can do with paper is to gesso over it. Gesso is a primer used in painting to create a surface that is easy to work with. If you don't have gesso (and maybe you don't want to buy it just yet) you could get a similar look with white acrylic paint. Use a paintbrush to create a light layer of paint over your paper, which will dull down the colours and the pattern, giving you a great new surface to work with. If you really hate that old paper, you can make the layer not-so-light!


Consider colours

When I am looking at older papers, often they have motifs on them that I am no longer interested in. But, if you are like me, often you don't want to just throw these pieces of paper away.

One thing you can do is to use this paper to build up layers on your pages. Consider the colours on your paper and look past the motifs. I use these pieces of paper to create matts for my photos or elements on the page. Sometimes I really hate the paper, so I have just a sliver showing. But you know what, it adds a nice bit of depth to my pages, and it is so satisfying using up that old stuff!


Just Use It

Speaking of feeling satisfied, there is nothing like that feeling of accomplishment when you use an old embellishment that you are not exactly in love with any more.

For me, I am not that into eyelets anymore. They are just a bit of a pain in the bum, and I would rather just use an enamel dot, or even a brad. To use an eyelet I have to get out my tools to make holes and set the eyelet... ugh. It makes me annoyed just thinking about the process.

But I do have eyelets left in my stash. I like to mix old products with new things on my pages to keep my stash fresh, so every so often I'll make an effort to use my eyelets. And when I see my old products that just work with my new products, it suddenly looks and feels fresh and new again.

So get out your older stuff that you are maybe not so in love with anymore, and match it up with your new stuff. Placing it on a page, at the very least you will get some satisfaction using up your old stash. But at the most, you will actually find a new love or discover what it was that made you fall in love with the product in the first place.

So get it out and use it!



Carlie Hamilton
Creative Team Member of SCRAP YOUR SCRAPS



Hello everybody, Solange-Isbaha here! I wanted to share a brilliant idea by Janet-CherryPicker, because I thought that it fit perfectly the topic: you can use this idea with scraps, or with papers considering only the color, like Carlie suggested... But of course, you can also use papers you love, like Janet-CherryPicker did!
So here is Janet-CherryPicker's project: thanks for sharing your ideas with us, Janet!

As any good scrapper, I wanna take supplies with me when we travel.
For car trips I used to take along plenty of print magazines, so after they started to
wean I had to come up with something else. I love being able to do something
'scrap-related' for those long car drives. The past few months I have been
using this kit. Super simple, super compant and super fun.

Before leaving, I use these punches and my scraps. I also use a circle punch too.



I punch out many pieces til I get a nice assortment.


Add in my Tombow glue and place it all in a Iris container. It measures about 10.5 "x 10.5".
This is what it looks like when I am using it. Just open and start creating.
It fits perfectly on my lap. No space needed.



While in transit from place to place, I do keep items bagged separately,
After the first trip, I soon realized I don't want to organize this bin every time I open it...lol



And here is what I make. Lots and lots of embellishments.
I have plans for these to go onto notecards for gift sets. But you could use them
for gift bags, tags, layouts, bookmarkers, just about anything.



Some close-ups. I just mix and match whatever is in my bin,
GREAT way to use scraps. I make 2 different sizes of scallop styles. 





And that is my current 'On the Road' Scrap Kit.
The only thing I bought was the Iris container- Hobby Lobby- the rest is just
'stash' items. Gotta love that.



 Janet-CherryPicker
 Guest contributor for SCRAP YOUR SCRAPS

4 comments:

  1. More great ideas to help me use up my stash! I think I know what I'll be doing this year while I'm waiting to pick up the boys at school! Love these tips!

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  2. Wow, these are great tips! I love using old items, I think for me, the key isn't to see them as old. So, when I keep them with my other old stuff (that may look outdated), I see it as "old".. when I take those items and mix them in with newer stuff, they just seem fun and cool again!

    Solange, I LOVE that doily punch!!! I may need to hunt one down now..

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  3. These are all terrific ideas, and with so much older stash I am excited to try my hand at some of the suggestions!

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  4. I love all the ideas and inspiration here! Thank you. I will definitely be using some of these ideas! :)

    ReplyDelete

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