Weekend creativity

I know you've got them too. Papers you just HAD to have when they came out. Probably a range of embellishments to go with them, an alphabet or two, maybe ribbons or buttons. They are/were gorgeous.  You have put them together in a bag ready for that perfect project. And they are still sitting on the shelf. Untouched. Unloved. Forlorn. Neglected. Forgotten.

Go on, admit it.... I'm not the only one who has these. Am I?

You know what you have to do with these?


Use them or lose them!

No, really.

If you don't love them any more, pass them on or throw them out. If you still love them, then be brave and just jump in and use it.

And of course, I'm not suggesting anything to you that I wouldn't do myself, so that is exactly what I've done.

I've been going through my stash and have a small pile of things to pass on to a card making friend. I have dumped some stuff in the round file. And I have been delving into bags of stash and using it. And it feels gooooood.

This weekend, I was browsing through one of my photo storage binders (à la LOM) and looking at photos from 2007 that I had felt needed to be scrapped - that's why I had printed out the photos. But, you know what? Many of them really don't. Either the story is not something I want to scrap, or it's been done in someway already, or the photos are rather blurghgh now I look at them. I have been taking out those photos fitting the last category and *shock horror* throwing them away. I don't want to scrap them or put them into regular photo albums so what is the point on holding onto them? Then I have been fishing out photos of events that I don't want to scrap and plopping them into regular photo albums.

And the rest?

Grab and scrap. Such as this one using 5 photos that I cut down and used. One or two went in the bin, and a couple have been put in the photo album pile.

** Ok, so I ran out of u's but the v works well enough. And see those doggy embellies? They must be 4 years old. I think Libby got them for me in a pack of themed items from Poundland or some other cheap and cheerful shop. I think they look great here. All the papers in the background came directly out of my scrap box. One trend I have noticed about my scrapping recently is that I borrow kids and dogs very often as subjects for my pages!

And this one uses 9 photos (again, trimmed down) in an adaptation of a sketch from my BPS class by May Flaum. There were a couple of photos which didn't make the cut and yet another half dozen or so to go into a regular photo album. 

** This one is a bit too pink I think but it sums up the day really well in one double layout - it didn't even need any journalling.

And I have just finished this photo album scrapbook about a trip to London I gave my best German friend for her special birthday. I used one of those really cheap, plastic photo albums costing less than €2, prettied it up and I now have a sweet little mini album to record the weekend. It appeared that I had double copies of most of the photos, so the other copy will probably be plopped into a regular photo album or in the bin. And I used some K&Co papers and embellishment that I think are as old as the photos. It's not my favourite paper range now but I still like it enough to use it. And somehow, it seems to match the theme. Then I used up lots of the small embellishments I had bought to go with it - using up nearly two complete packs - liberating! There is enough space in this small album for a few things that I had brought back from the trip - tickets and a couple of postcards - and the rest of the bag of memorabilia? In the bin. Looking through it, I was happy I had kept it but I just didn't need to include it here. (I was inspired by last week's posts on Write. Click. Scrapbook. on this topic - see this post here or this one here for examples.)

There is not a lot of detail in this mini-book, but the places, highlights and a few fun facts are captured and that is enough.

And that 2007 photo storage album is looking a lot less full which can only be a good thing.