Use your stash Tuesday to scrap some OLDIES but goodies!

It's use your stash Tuesday here at My Creative Endeavors, and this week I am using not only my old stash but some old photos as well! These photos of my brother range from 1978 to 1985. This layout was created for the family challenge at Personalscrapper for the Slice contest and uses sketch #12 from the 52 sketches/52 weeks site. The papers used are from Cosmo Crickets Dutch Girl line which is weird for a boy page, but the colors blended well,and the aged appearance fits well with photos from the 70's and 80's. I used a tag behind each photo to journal funny stories of my brother from when we were kids, like: getting stuck in the mud in the cowlot, locking my sister in her bedroom so she had to crawl out her window to get out, how he loves hunting, and how he would NEVER help with the chores! LOL! Fun times but times I might forget before too much longer, although I doubt I will ever forget him locking my sister in the bedroom! So I decided to document them, plus these photos are scanned and retouched off the originals, and they are better but still not good. They were very faded, scratched etc from being stored in an old box for years and then a magnetic album. This page was made with almost exclusively from the Personalscrapper May 2007 kit, so I used up some more of my older stash, but nonetheless, still LOVE anything Cosmo Cricket, don't you? This actually my first Cosmo Cricket paper to own, now I would say Mr. Campy is my fav line of theirs, but I haven't seen Snorkel in person yet, it looks great online. Hoping to see it at CKC, I'll let you know if I buy any of it (or all of it for that matter!)In fact, I will be leaving in just a few days, lots to do to get ready, hoping for nice weather there as well as energy to complete lots of pages!

Use your stash Tuesday

It's use your stash Tuesday again today. The title of today's layout is "Climb til your dreams come true". This is a title of a poem I just love and it goes as follows: Often your tasks will be many and more then you think you can do. Often the road will be rugged and the hills insurmountable to. But always remember that the hills ahead are never as steep as they seem and with faith in your heart start upwords and climb until you reach your dream. For nothing in life that's worthy is to hard to achieve, if you have the courage to try it and you have the faith to believe. For faith is a force that's greater then knowledge, power, and skill. Many defeats turn to truimph if you trust in God's wisdom and will. For faith is a mover of mountains. There is nothing that God cannot do. So start out today with faith in your hear and climb til your dreams come true." Poem by Bjorn Brands. This is one of my all time favorite pictures of my son. He was on his first grade field trip to the Fort Worth Nature Center and I was walking behind the kids on our hike when I snapped this picture. Love the greenery and this old rock staircase! The paper for this layout is by My Minds Eye and was found in my May 2007 Personalscrapper kit. I made this layout for the Slice contest challenge at Personalscrapper "an oldie but a goodie", the challenge being to use up some older stash. The alphabet letters for the subtitle are by Basic Grey and came from an old QVC kit I got when I first started scrapping. But the thing I am most proud of using from my stash are those old Making Memories washers in the middle of my flowers. Do you remember the metal craze about 5 yrs ago? Well, I just had to have all these metal things, and then I never used any of them. So I decided to do so tonight. I must say that the only things that aren't really old on my layout are the Pink Paislee punch out (the tree in the lower right corner) and the letters by Making Memories for the word climb, although I did buy these things last summer, so they are almost a whole year old. The best thing about this page is that NO NEW supplies were purchased to make this page!!!! YEAH! So go dig into your stash right now and find something to old to use on the next layout you make!

Family layout for Use your stash Tuesday

Here is my one measly layout I created last weekend. I really like it, but you would think I could do more than one in a weekend...but it was a little tedious cutting out the branch and bird as well as covering, cutting and sanding my chipboard circles. This layout was my entry for the weekly challenge over at 52 sketches last week. It was based on sketch #9. I used the November 2008 Personalscrapper kit featuring We R Memory Keepers Nonsense line. The chipboard and rub ons are from Scenic Route and the letter stickers are from American Crafts. I really like these bright colors, at first I was worried about what pictures to use them with, but really they blend nicely with most pictures. I have almost used up this kit, something I am trying to do with some of my older kits, to make room for all the new ones that keep arriving! HA! It's harder than you think to keep up. I like to bounce from one thing to the next (if you haven't noticed) so I rarely stay with one kit for more than one layout, thus many of my older kits are still taking up space even though I really like them, it seems like I get sidetracked onto another kit quickly. I am off to work on the Inspired Blueprints latest sketch challenge then will begin work on sketch #10 for the 52 sketches weekly challenge for this week, just don't have pics in mind for that one yet. See you tomorrow!

March Madness

Yes, it is Use Your stash Tuesday here at My Creative Endeavors but with a March Madness twist today. Do you love college basketball? I sure do, it is really something I look forward to all year long. I am a HUGE fan of the Kansas Jayhawks, but love following all the Big 12 teams. So since basketball is on my mind a lot lately I decided to get out all those basketball pics I have yet to scrap and get them done. On this page I used up a piece of paper that I bought when my son first started playing basketball 4 years ago. I used my long neglected stamp set from Stampin' Up called Sporting Goods for my embellishments. This page is based on sketch #3over at 52 sketches/52 weeks. I discovered this site like 4 weeks ago, but am playing catch up as I didn't get in on the first 4 sketches, so I am backtracking a bit as I plan on using all 52 sketches they put out this year...love that site! I have completed sketch #8, just have to add my journaling and I will show that to you tomorrow. My favorite thing about this page is that I didn't use a lot of embellishments as this year I have totally cut back on buying so many embellishments as I hardly ever use them especially the "themey" ones like basketball or birthday etc, I find that more generic embellishments like brads, flowers etc are more versatile and will get used up faster. Thanks for looking!

Use your stash Tuesday

For today's challenge: Use your Stash Tuesday, I decided that I needed to use up two lovely chipboard album kits I got last year to give as gifts, but then never got around to making. Since I had planned on using them as Christmas gifts I decided to use them instead for two gift needs I had upcoming, one for my secret sister swap over at Personalscrapper and another for a gift for a friend at church. They went together very easy and the it was easier than I thought to cover the letters, I just adhered my paper, cut around the letter with my exacto knife and then used my Basic Grey file kit to sand it down. It was a bit messy sanding all that paper, but other than that I made them each in an evening. I have way too many kits like this that I buy with the good intentions of making for someone and then never do. So this year I plan on actually making up some of

kits to actually use for RAK's or birthday gifts etc. That will be a good use for some of my Use Your Stash Tuesday challenges. I

hope to give some of these kits I have been "collecting" to some good homes! This kit is by Breezy Designs and is in their Runway collection called Meadowbrook. I love the chocolate and blue colors, very pretty in person. Hope to see you back here again tomorrow for Git 'R Done Wednesday, and it will be a special edition tomorrow folks as I will be completing the LAST layout in my 1/2 finished drawer, hmmm..what ever shall I do with an empty drawer? Maybe buy some more paper??? I am sure I will find a way to fill it up all too fast! LOL! See you tomorrow folks!

Use your stash Tuesday the card edition

For this weeks Use your stash Tuesday I decided to use up some of my retired Stampin Up paper that I have had for so long now I can't remember what great idea I had planned for it! I decided that I needed to use something with some spring colors to wash away the winter blues and even though I really didn't have any pressing need for cards at the present time I went ahead and used up the rest of this paper making 12 cards ( 2 sets of 6) to give away as "pick me ups" to some friends. I really hate to see all this paper just sitting here wasting away when it can be put to good use. And besides, I wanna get some more. I also decided that if I died anytime soon it would surely look bad if anyone saw how much paper I actually have hoarded in my little scrapbooking room! These cards also gave me a chance to break out my poor neglected stamp sets. I used a retired Stampin Up set called "Wishing you the best" for the stamped images as well as last year's Sellabration set "Lots of Thoughts" for the sentiments. The sketch is based off of my favorite sketch I have come up with for a card, and was the same one I used on my Halloween AND Christmas cards, and before you say it, I know its time to come up with another one. I promise to try, but for some reason just can't seem to get this one outta my mind quite yet! LOL! It's like some cheesy song you don't really like but you wake up singing and then continue to do so all day long. ...which for me today was "Jungle Love" as I heard it on some commercial early this morning and then walked around singing it all day...sheesh...I definitely DO NOT LIKE that song. Well, better get back to work on my project for Git 'R Done Wednesday, so catch ya back here same time same place tomorrow!

Use your stash Tuesday 2009

Welcome to the first edition of Use your stash Tuesday for 2009! For this layout, which I did for the Hobby challenge over at Personalscrapper, I used my September Personalscrapper kit, which features Fancy Pants All Fall. I also used a Heidi Swapp ghost heart (which I have had for a few years and never knew how or what to use it for)- they really show up so much better if you add a touch of paint to the edge I found out. I also used my Fancy Pants felt (big bracket) and one of my journaling spots from Elle's studio. I used nothing new for this layout and used up quite a bit of older things from my stash, in fact I only have a few pages of All Fall paper left, and since I actually bought the add on I had a bunch of it. It may be the first kit where I totally use up every last bit before the next kit from that month comes out! I like how the the picture of my blog banner turned out when printed, it looks like a postcard..in fact I thought I should use them to send out notes to people, but that might make me look a bit self absorbed huh? If you are wondering how I took the pic of myself blogging, I used my self timer ...the only danger if you do this is, don't trip over something when running to get in place. I tripped over the USB cable to my camera that was still hooked to the computer and the first picture was of my behind :o) Enjoy your evening and tune in tomorrow for Git 'R Done Wednesday, I have a great page to show you that would be perfect for Valentine's Day!

Countdown to Christmas!

Did ya'll miss me? Well, it's been one big party around here. My scrapbook party on Saturday was SO much fun! Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, but can you believe I did not take ONE picture? Shame on me. I think this is my fifth year to do this and I have yet to take a picture. We enjoyed ourselves so much that I am planning on doing it again next year (not next Christmas but literally next year, in a few months), why wait until the holidays to have so much fun and get together with a bunch of fun and creative ladies to talk about scrapbooking?! The double page spread is what we made for one of our fun projects. It uses last's years Basic Grey Christmas paper, Figgy Pudding. So as you can see I was able to use up some of my stash of Christmas paper with this project...I tend to save and hoard my Christmas paper, but figured if I start to use some of it up I can always buy more. Have you seen some of the lines out there now? I love the new Basic Grey Wassail line ( check out the December Personalscrapper kit it features this plus the FA LA LA LA line by Making Memories). My next fav is the Cosmo Cricket O JOY line. Also like the October Afternoon, American Crafts and My Mind's Eye lines. I guess you can say I am easy to please YUCK YUCK! These pics are from Christmas 2006, I hope to get a bunch of Christmas layouts done this weekend at the online Personalscrapper crop. My son is having a sleep over on this coming Saturday with his friends for his 11th birthday, so I will most likely be up all night, and I hope to get some cropping down, if I can hear myself think over all the boys laughing and playing! Catch you again soon, promise I won't wait a week to post again!

Another homemade Invitation

Today is use your stash Tuesday and although I don't have a scrapbook page to show you, I did use a lot of my older stash on this birthday invitation to my son's eleventh birthday party. I used some of my hoarded Stampin' Up paper as well as my discontinued, very old star eyelets. I was SOO into eyelets a few years back and have tons I need to use up! I also used my neglected star punches which I love but don't use much. The "its a party" was cut on my Cricut, which I am trying to use more and more and my goal is to use it for my use your stash Tuesdays. I won't allow myself to buy anymore cartridges until I have used the ones I have on a regular basis...need to prove to myself it is worth the price to buy new ones. Does anyone else have a Cricut? What are your favorite cartridges, drop me a comment, I would love to know which ones you recommend, because if I keep using it more I plan on buying myself a new one for my birthday in a few weeks. I couldn't come up with a design for this invitation, and as I was in a rush, so busy as we all are this time of year, I decided to use the same layout as my previous invite to my scrapbooking party. Try that sometime, its simple and makes you feel creative if you just cannot come up with something and need to in a pinch. You can look at my post for November 23rd and see how different they look by changing out the papers etc. Tune in tomorrow for Git 'R Done Wednesday, I'll have a scrapbook page completed out of my drawer again, and last count I will have just 8 more to go! YEA! Maybe I'll reward myself with some more scrapbook goodies! HA! One last thing...hop on over to Valerie's GOT SKETCH blog, http://gotsketch.blogspot.com/, she is having a FREE sketch class starting tomorrow December 3rd. YOU WILL NOT WANT to miss this! Believe me, her work and her sketches are AWESOME. So sign up, it is only a week long and if you don't have time to complete everything you can still download all the materials and do the assignments after the holidays. Now, that's a WAY better deal then anything you bought on Black Friday!

More Mr. Campy

Well, I did it, I used up all my Mr. Campy paper on this layout done for use your stash Tuesday. Now, how come I am left wanting more of it? I just love this line from Cosmo Cricket! I didn't know if I would use it or not, so I just bought 3 sheets of it. I ended up using all of it plus the sheet of stickers I got at Hobby Lobby too. I got 3 layouts out of these 3 sheets, plus 2 cards, so not too bad. The store I bought it at didn't have the entire line, so I was limited to these 2 designs, but they are double sided, so that helps a bit. I love the wood grained paper. I also used my star punches and some older buttons and felt on this layout, as well as a journaling card by My Mind's eye I have had in my stash for a long time. The colors look much richer in real life, the green on my computer screen looks like kelly green, but in real life it is more of an olive green and meshed well with the lighter green of the leaf paper. This layout is based on Inspired Blueprints Sketch #3. This is a new blog, with just 4 sketches out so far, but I love all 4 of them. I plan on using #4 soon, as its a double page spread. You can click on the blinkie on my sidebar to go check them out. They have recently added a gallery and it is OOZING inspiration for those of you in need of a good healthy dose. Don't forget to check back tomorrow for Git 'R Done Wednesday, I have another cousins page to show you! I had a hard time getting pictures without shadows tonight of my 2 cards, so I will try and get them photographed in the day light hours tomorrow and upload them soon as well. Have a great night and hope this inspires you to dip into some of your older stash and try to use it all up! Good luck!

Count your blessings!

It's time for Use your stash Tuesday again! Well, this time I really dug deep and didn't use even one little thing new, its all older stuff I need to use up, PLUS I used some tools that had been gathering dust. The paper is once again from my October 2007 Personalscrapper kit, the stickers from my January 2008 kit and the brad, button and floss are all who knows how old. I also used my Stampin' Up tag punch to make my tag and my cricut to cut my letters! I love the look of the letters cut by the Doodletype Cricut cartridge, but am most often too lazy to dig it out to use it. But I think it is going to be a staple in some of my upcoming pages as its soo hard to match alphabets sometimes. I just wanted to share another tip I learned from my PS friend and blogging buddy AmyInky..you know how we all have TONS of 1/2 used sheets of alphabet stickers? Well, Amy gave me to tip to put almost empty sheets on a bullentin board so they are in plain sight and then play Boogle with the remaining letters to form some words, which I did tonight with this old doodlebug sticker sheet and I was able to make the word GRATEFUL FOR... I had originally wanted the word THANKFUL but I didn't have an "H"...now one dilemma, I didn't have 2 "O"'s either, but I made one "O" out of a "G" by cutting it with my scissors...now I am down to very few letters on this sheet. My son and I had fun coming up with some remaining words and I wrote them on a sticky note and stapled it to the remaining sheet! How useful and easy huh? Plus we had fun over dinner doing a "word find" together! Wondering where I got this idea? Well, it is a lift of the Nov. 2007 CK cover. I was cleaning this weekend and went to toss it out in the recycle bin and it caught my eye...glad it did, I LOVE how this page turned out! I knew right away what photo I would use, as I love the look of these little sweeties with their drumsticks, don't you? This photo was taken in 2006, and its hard to believe they have changed so much in just two short years! The journaling reads: "At Christmas this year when I stopped to count my blessings, I counted you two boys!" Don't forget to count your blessings before you go to bed tonight and tune in tomorrow for Git 'R Done Wednesday!

An Attitude of Gratitude Creates Blessings!

I love this saying and I think it is so so true, don't you? I recently bought a picture with this saying to put on my mantle during the fall/harvest season. I decided I liked the saying so much I would use it on a scrapbook page. I love how this page turned out. Of course we are coming upon the season of thankfulness and gratitude and Simple Scrapbooks had an excellent idea in its most recent issue (see the last page of November/December issue). The idea is to make a fast formula GRATITUDE album. You take a basic photo album with 4 x 6 sleeves and make 30 or 31 journaling cards and then each day of that month you write what you are thankful for! The best part of the deal is Simple Scrapbooks gives you the templates to create the title page and the journaling cards for your album! Just go to http://www.simplescrapbooksmag.com and click on free downloads and then download Cathy Zielske's template. I plan on doing this with my son each day in November. I think its a great idea, and will get us in the mood for the upcoming holidays. I'd love to hear what you are thankful for, please leave me a comment telling me what you are most thankful for at this moment. I am thankful that my Dad came through his surgery A-OK! He is doing better and hopes to be coming home from the hospital sometime this week. I may not be posting as much this week due to spending evening after work at the hospital, but we should be back to normal schedules next week. This layout did serve my other purpose for today: USE YOUR STASH TUESDAY...everything here is from my October 2007 PS kit EXCEPT the chipboard letters, brads and circle paper. I get so excited when I match some older paper with some newer paper! Hope all is well with you and your family, & I will catch up with you all real soon!

You've been booed

Happy Tuesday everyone! It's use your stash Tuesday today and that means I try to make a project that uses things I have hoarded for awhile and need to use up! Today I decided I needed to use up some scraps of last's years Halloween paper. I loved this paper and used almost 2 packs of it making sucker holders, cards etc. I had wanted to go "BOOING" last Halloween and never got around to it, so I decided what better way to use up those last few scraps and get a jump start on my "booing" baskets, so I created 2 of these cute little Boo baskets. For those of you who don't know what "BOOING" is, it is where you take a treat basket to someone's house, ring the doorbell, and run, leaving the basket on the front porch. Now I can't run too fast, so I plan on having my son do all the running, I'll be driving the getaway car! I have had these baskets around since I did a baby shower for my sister almost 5 years ago, in fact the side covered with paper is stamped on with baby stuff! I had stamped it, didnt' like how it turned out and stuck them in my scrap pile, where they have been for the last 5 years...time to move those suckers on out! The stamps used are the collage and rough edge alphabets from Stampin Up, oldies but goodies, but where gathering a bit of dust so decided to use them here. The bat is from an old Halloween kit that I never used. So mission accomplished, a bunch of old stuff used up and heading out to be used as boo baskets. The poem that I half way made up (I did get inspiration from a similar poem in a magazine, but it was too long for my tag so I changed it quite a bit) is on the back of the tag and reads : This is the time for goblins & bats, Halloween spirits, ghosts and cats, weird happenings and witches' brew, and these are the things I wish for you: May the only spirit you chance to meet be the spirit of love and warm friends sweet. May the only goblin that comes your way be this fast little phantom whom you've met this day. It's better giving then receiving we all know its true, so can you guess who the phantom is who left this yummy sweet treat for you? Happy Halloween! You've been BOOED! One bummer of this project is I BROKE my cropadile on it....I just got it a few months back and though you can't see it here, I attached the long striped piece to the sides of the basket with snaps that I have had forever. I thought it made it looked more finished since the piece was not quite long enough to reach the sides ends and kind of ends in the middle of the side of the basket, well after I did 2 snaps my little pointy end of the setter part broke off! I was very upset, as this is a brand new $30 tool and now it is unusable except for the punch part, and the whole not hammering thing is why I got it to begin with. Anyone else had the same issue? I hate to buy another one now, but I may use my 40% off at Hobby Lobby this week to get another, but I would hate to have it happen again. If you have heard of this happening to you or someone else, let me know as I won't waste my $$$ on another one! Have a good rest of the day folks and don't forget to tune in tomorrow for Git R Done Wednesday! And if you are someone who gets a similar looking boo basket soon, please act surprised, after all, I am sure a bunch of people will copy this idea! HA!

A Girly Page for a change

Seems like with only a boy to scrap I tend to shy away from pinks, purples, bling, and a bunch of floral girly paper. There are SO many scrapbooking materials that fall into this category that it is hard to pass them up sometimes. Kind of like when you shop for a baby girl you tend to buy like 100 things for the shower, but when its a boy, you get like 3 ! LOL! Or, at least that is my tendency, see it starts with infants. Way more girly stuff out there in all walks of life. Well, I have been floating around some ideas about how to "USE" some of this stuff I have that is too "girly" for my boys pages and this is what I have come up with for this weeks USE YOUR STASH TUESDAY. I got these papers in my July 2007 Personalscrapper kit, so you can see once again, stuff over a year old being used up, lets just say it warms my heart peeps :o) Its not that I didn't like the papers, just didn't have pics for them, but now I do. It's not the best pic, so bear with me, but I like how the page turned out. The title is PRETTY SUMMER FEET. JOURNALING: My first pedicure Age 41. I have also gotten out some of my baby pics and plan to scrap them using some girly stuff I have too, so check back often, maybe I will get to that soon. Catch ya tomorrow for another episode of Git 'R Done Wednesday!

Where has the month gone?

It seems like just yesterday we were celebrating Labor Day and the start of school, boy this month has flown by! OK...down to businesss....today is use your stash Tuesday (I know it really doesn't rhyme) but the challenge is to use something in your stash that you have had forever and just never seem to use. Well, today my layout features: one sticker (giggle definition in bottom left corner) I got when I first started scrappin', some black letter stickers I got from Doodlebug and have had lying around with very few letters on them hoping to "someday" use them, and some border stickers and paper I got a few months back thinking I would use them for sure and look 6 mos later and I still hadn't done anything with them, well now I have..YEAH for me! Nothing new within the last 6+ mos on this page folks (except for the scallop mini paper and chipboard circles in the middle of the page) I would love to see what you do with your oldies but goodies so post a link to your creation in the comment section for us all to see! These pictures were taken in 2004 at Mall of America theme park, doesn't Jakob look like he is having a ball? The journaling is hidden behind the photos at the far right, and can be pulled out with that littel tab with a star on it. I used this layout for a Sept. challenge at Personalscrapper where we were to pick a letter and what it stands for, I immediately thought of J is for Jakob, but when I decided to use these pictures, I decided that it is more for JOY, don't you agree? Fun challenge. It's hard to come up with titles sometimes. Don't forget Saturday October 4th is WORLD CARD MAKING DAY, so don't forget to make a card or two that day, and if you think you don't have any card making stuff, my challenge to you is to use some of your "old" scrapbooking stuff and create away, you might be surprised what you come up with!