Using up the scraps

My plan to reduce the Mountain of Stash has taken a bit of a blow the last few months as my craft-shopping habit has kicked in again, but this week I've been going through my scraps box to see what I could use up. There's a lot of stuff in there - bits left over from projects and kits, odd and ends that are just "too good to thrown away", interesting bits of packaging and advertising material that looked as if they might come in useful - I'd forgotten about half of it until I tipped it all out on to the table.

I selected a handful of co-ordinating pieces, using the colours in the patterned card as a guide

And put them together to create this

But really that hadn't started to make even a dent in the pile of scraps. Then I remembered the "Serendipity" designs that were popular about 15 years ago, and thought I'd see if I can remember how they were done. First I tore up a few toning papers into rough pieces

Then I stuck them down on to a piece of card - I chose a matching colour in case any showed through.  I used a wet adhesive and left it to dry before trimming the edges.

Next I stamped random swirls over with a silver pad and embossed with silver powder. The surface is very uneven at this stage, so you really need to use some kind of abstract design. Letters or a picture won't work as the patchy result would make it unclear. After embossing, I added further streaks and splodges with tow shades of glitter glue. When everything was dry, I left it to flatten overnight, under a pile of heavy books.

Finally I cut it into squares. I find the best way to do this is to mark the squares on the back and cut with heavy scissors or a guillotine. The layers of paper, card and glue make it too thick for a craft knife and a rotary trimmer could drag the torn, uneven paper edges.

I chose to make the squares about 1" (2.5cm) each, but other sizes or even shapes would produce interesting effects.  Once you have your shapes, let your imagination run free! Here are two cards made with mine

 

Having used up so many scraps, I just had to play along with The Craft Room Challenge,  because the current one is "Use Your Scraps"

And since everything I've used is old - even the technique - I'm also joining in with "Anything goes" at Use It Tuesday.

 

Serendipity

A few days ago, I ordered myself a new craft CD - planning ahead, I chose a double CD of Christmas designs. However the wrong one turned up - the one I received was "The Wine Buffs" by Katy Sue Designs. As soon as I saw the summary of contents on the back, I knew I had to have it, so I sorted out the payment details with the sender and dived straight in with it.

I've already blogged a couple of things I have made with it, here and here  and this time I have used a cartoon and sentiment that were intended as labels for a bottle shaped card,  trimming away the shaped outline to leave just the design. Many of the designs on the CD are perfect for men's cards - cards that are usually so hard to think up - so this CD is going to get a lot of use.

I'm playing along with:
Creative Craft Challenge #10 - Just Checking
CAS on Sunday #9 - Make it Masculine

Aged to Perfection

I was really pleased that this week's challenge on CD Sundays is "Aged to Perfection"  because the new CD-ROM I bought this week, The Wine Buffs from Katy Sue Designs, includes that exact sentiment, so it gave me the perfect excuse to play with my new toy.

There are some great shaped cards on the CD, and I decided to take a short cut by printing a wine bottle shaped card and then turning the card over to print the backing paper. Unfortunately I put the card back in the printer the wrong way round and ended up with the inside of the card lined with upside-down wine glasses. I rescued it, though, by printing a new backing sheet and bonding it to the card with spray adhesive (making SURE it was the right way up!) before cutting it out.

There are lots of labels to choose from for the front and back of the bottle - I went with two that tied in well with the challenge, and then added a blank label to the inside to write on. A couple of "cork" sentiments  added with 3d foam were all it needed to complete a very unusual card.

Meal Planning Monday - May 27th

Not exactly a plan for the week this week, just for three days. But first, a look back at last week's plan. Well, it DID seem like a good idea at the time - but it made us realise why we don't use packet and pre-prepared ingredients. After three days of food that tasted of nothing but salt, we abandoned the idea, and it was a relief to get back to "proper" food again!

This will be my last meal plan for a while, as the next few weeks sees us doing a lot of travelling and very little eating at home. And when we ARE at home, we'll be trying to use up odds and ends in the fridge so we can leave it empty.

But first, three days of normal routine, and the meals will be

Monday steak, bought from the farmer's market, with new potatoes sautéed with garlic and thyme, and an endive salad.

Tuesday spag bol with the rest of the endive

Wednesday Cauliflower, butternut and chickpea curry with rice

Despite not being a whole week, I'm linking up to Meal Planning Monday at At Home With Mrs M

A recipe for humour

I bet you thought this was going to be a food post, didn't you? But actually this week's Less is More challenge is a recipe - and the recipe is Humour, so that's the theme of today's card.

It's very hard to create a CAS card that is humorous, and I didn't have anything suitable among my stamps, but I've just got a new CD-ROM called "The Wine Buffs" and some of the cartoon toppers on it have a simplicity about them, with plenty white space, so I've incorporated one of them into my card, along with a  "wine cork effect" sentiment from the same CD.

Going Green!

This week's CD Sunday challenge is "Going Green" - the colour or the environmental aspect or both. So I thought that as well as using the colour green, I would try to use something I had previously printed out for a different project, saving the paper, ink and power needed to print new papers.

This green brocade paper and the greeting are left over from papers I printed off from Debbie Moore's Glitter and Glitz Art Deco Story Boxes CD. The fan is made using a Keepsake embossing board - I cut two shapes, leaving one without the inner embossed details, and hinged the two together with a folded piece of matching card. The flower and leaf die cuts are from a Kanban set several years old.

Isn't gold card hard to photograph, especially on a gloomy day like today when it isn't possible to switch the flash off and use the natural light streaming in through the window! I'm afraid these photos are the best of a very bad bunch!

Meal planning Monday - the "It seemed like a good idea at the time" edition.

I don't use convenience foods. Not for me the ready meal, the packet sauce mix, the instant noodle. So what am I doing with all these in my cupboards?

Well, in every case, "It seemed like a good idea at the time". A good idea to pick one up after sampling it at a food show, or visiting an ethnic store, or a good idea to enter a competition where it was among the prizes, or pick up a pack in order to enter a competition featuring it.

So rather than plan individual meals this week, I've bought a big pack of chicken breasts and a selection of veg and salads - and also lifted out various tins of Chinese veg and coconut milk that "seemed like good ideas" too. And I've rounded up all the part used bags of rice and pasta in the cupboard. The week's meals are going to be "interesting", created out of what I can think up using these odds and ends. It's going to be rather like "Ready Steady Cook"!  Tonight there will be Malay Chicken curry, Indonesian vegetable curry and rice, and I will set some chicken to marinate for Chicken Tikka tomorrow and have a vegetable fried rice with it. After that - who knows? Maybe chicken in red onion and gorgonzola sauce with pasts and salad, or crispy crumbed chicken with lentils?

The one exception will be Thursday, when I'm going to London for the day to the Chelsea Flower Show, and Mark has a long day working further afield than usual, so on Wednesday I'll make macaroni cheese that can just be hated through when we get in.

Before I go, I'd just like to share that the Malaysian Chicken Curry Paste, Kari Ayam, is imported through their Hong Kong agent, Fok Hing trading limited. I don't know about you, but I'm laughing like a fourteen year old at that!

You'll find lots more meal plans, most of them much more structured than this, at At Home With Mrs M - why not share yours?