Out with the old, in with the new for 2020, and that goes for our scrap stash, too! Today, design team member Steph Grimes is with us to share how she is using up her December 2019 Kit and creating a beautiful pocket page spread around her stamps and scraps! Let’s take a look!
Hello friends! Happy New Year! I am thrilled to be a part of the Elle’s Studio Design Team for a second year and can’t wait to share with you all again this year. I don’t know about you, but to me a new year always feels like a good time to get rid of the old and make room for the new. To that end, I have been spending some time going through all my scrappy supplies and only holding onto the bits I love or have a plan for using. For my first project this year, I am using up some of the leftover bits and pieces from the December monthly kit.
Supplies | December 2019 Kit, December Labels, Yellow Puffy Alphabet Stickers, Wonderful Life Stamp, Stanley Jr. Alphabet Stamp
The December kit had a lot of my favorite color included: TEAL! I always hoard these tags if I don’t have an immediate use for them. Since most of my projects for December were focused on Christmas, this beautiful color didn’t match with most of the photos I was using, and I had quite a few tags and die-cuts left over from the kit. That became my starting point for these pocket pages. I had recently taken these photos of my niece and I making treats together for the first time and the photos worked well with the cards I had left.
One trick I have for using up leftovers and scraps when I’m trying to use up a kit is to incorporate stamps to make my dwindling supplies go further. The “Hooray” tag from the December 2019 Kit worked perfectly for holding a stamped title of this cute question I kept getting from my niece—It sounded like she wanted to put “bagels” on the pretzels, but she was really saying “sprinkles”! It was really funny and so cute when I finally realized what she had been saying. I used the solid Stanley Jr. Alphabet Stamp to stamp out the words from her question, as I heard them, in each box on the card.
I also used the Wonderful Life Stamp with some of the Yellow Puffy Alphabet Stickers I had left over to create a little sentiment for one of my photos. I didn’t have another label or diecut left from the kit that matched or had quite the right sentiment, so I just made my own! Another great way to use your stamps to stretch your supplies.
I always feel like I’ve really done a good job when I can throw away an empty sheet of stickers—isn’t that just the best feeling? When you start to run low on alphabet stickers, you can sometimes re-purpose other letters or numbers remaining to make the character you need. For example, I didn’t have any letter “E” stickers left in these Yellow Puffy Alphabet Stickers, so I turned a number “3” backward and used that for my “You & Me” sentiment. I also could have mixed and matched alphabet stickers and stamps for an interesting look here.
Speaking of using up alphabet stickers, I have a bonus tip for you today. When my puffy alphas are almost gone, I spell out words and phrases I know that I can use on future projects, and rearrange the words right on the acetate sheet for quick creating! For some of the letters I don’t commonly use, like X, I just trimmed them down with scissors to make them lowercase Y’s. I don’t mind that they are a little wonky, I think that adds character. I also have some numbers and symbols left that could be used.
It’s always a great feeling to use your supplies! It’s so much better to get creative with them and find ways to use as much of the product you love as you can that to just hoard them for “someday.” I have found these tips help me get the most out of my monthly kit and extras and I hope you find them useful, too! Do you have any tips for using your scraps and leftover bits of kits? Please share them on Instagram and use the hashtag #EllesStudio. We’d love to hear them!
