Monday, December 12, 2011

See you next year

From all of us here at Use Your Stuff

We wish you and your family a safe and happy holiday season.



Lynne, Janet, Barb and Joy


We will meet you back here on 
Monday January 2nd, 2012.


See ya then!

Monday, December 5, 2011

For the Holidays - challenge #14

Well the weather outside isn't that frightful but I'm still inside and working up a storm in my craft-room.
I'm not sure about you but I am knee deep in holiday decorations and projects. I love to create Christmas gifts for my family, this year is chock-full of goodness. Cards, mini-books, calendars and more.

Since I'm in a festive mood I thought this week would be perfect to challenge you to use your favourite holiday colours. We want to see your Christmas cards, holiday themed layouts and your home decor projects if your making them.

Christmas colours galore.....I told ya I was in a festive mood. :)


Hey Barb, Janet and Lynne! What have you been making with your stuff?

Barb
I've tackled the December Daily and have been right on track with my layouts for this project. I'll share two of them here, and the rest is on my blog: A Day in my Life


Lynne

I made a Chanaukah tag and a nice LO about one of my favorite parts of the holiday - eating and making Potato Latkes. My son and daughter-in-law put up a HUGE batch of latkes every Chanokah. They have three fry pans on the stove working all at once.







Monday, November 28, 2011

Challenge # 13 - Scrapping with Scraps

Good Monday morning ladies. It's time for another challenge.
My challenge this time is going to be a very quick and easy one because if you're like me, life is becoming very full at this time of the year.

My challenge is to dig into your scraps. you can use one (or two for a two-paged layout) full sheet of cardstock for your background. Everything else must be from your old scraps. Dig them out and use them up. ...and since this blog is about using your stuff, I'm going to suggest that you dig into your older embellishments to use them up - but that's not a neccessity.

Here's my layout. I have so many scraps that I could probably scrap for a whole year without cutting into any new sheets of patterned paper (but then what fun would that be?)


Enjoy the challenge and don't forget to come back here and link your finished project here. We'd love to see what you come up with.

Since I still have a prize left over from the last challenge I did, I will extend it to this challenge. So, for everyone who complete's this challenge and uploads it here by December 12th your name will be put into a random draw for the prize.

Come on girls, let's Use Your Stuff!


Joy

This layout really took the scrapping with scraps seriously. 
A few leftover strips and pieces that I could cut into circles, that's all. 
Even the title and birds were cut from scraps. I added a few stamps and 
chipboard embellishments then called this layout done.




Monday, November 21, 2011

Summer Blues

Seeing how the weather is starting to get wetter and colder....I'm missing the sunny warmer weather so my challenge is to do anything from summer that makes your day....I'm having the-----Summer Blues



Barb
Summer for me usually involves water. I always have some kind of water layout on the go. So, on this chilly November morning, here's my reminder of summer and what always makes me smile. ...and as always, it's great to use my stash!




Lynne

'Life's a Beach' isn't it?? I took Janet's post literally, by scrapping with the color Blue and documenting a favorite summertime past time. I don't get to do this very often anymore, so when my daughter suggested a special day just for us at the beach followed by dinner out for clams, who was I to argue. Thanks Janet for making me remember these good times.





Monday, November 14, 2011

November Color Challenge - White

We had Nor'Easter snowstorm here a few day before Halloween. Very, very unusual for New England. So in honor of the very early snowfall, I want to see a monochromatic WHITE layout or card. Step outside your 'color' box and let's see what you can come up with when you don't use very much color. I will let you use a very tiny bit as an accent, but I want to see WHITE. Here is my example using Basic Grey's Just the Basics. It is one of my favorite lines. I hope you like it too.

Let's see what the other ladies can do. I am sure they will be just wonderful.


Joy

This was a hard challenge for me this week. White, white & more white.
Thank goodness we were allowed to use an accent colour.


Barb
What a fun challenge this was. I work a lot on white backgrounds but I don't think I've every done a layout with just white (and a touch of green). I think I will be doing this again.

Monday, November 7, 2011

Challenge #10~ Stamp it Up

Are you ready?
It's time to dig into your stash and get out those stamps.
The sky's the limit, use your stamps this week anyway you want. Stamp it Up!


To all of you readers and challenge participants THANK YOU for taking the time to visit UYS, we have really enjoyed visiting your blogs & seeing your wonderful creations.
I can't believe that 10 weeks have passed by so quickly. Ten challenges, 40 layouts and lots of fun!
Thank you to my fellow creative contributors for all your inspiring work over the past 10 weeks.

I hope you can join us for the challenge this week, have fun gettin' inky!

Now lets see what Lynne, Barb & Janet have been up to this week......


Janet's Cards
(digi stamps from Bugaboo!)



Barb
For my layout I stamped the title and got out a new splash stamp that I found. Then I used my newest addiction - embossing powder. I can't get enough!




Lynne

OK, I stamped. It took me all week to get this done. I apologize for the delay. I will be a first time grandma sometime in April. Isn't the newest member to my family adorable? BTW, I stamped cute little red hearts on the flowers.



Monday, October 31, 2011

It's the Little Things that Count

Happy Monday everyone. It's hard to believe that we're at the end of another month and that tomorrow is November 1st! If you're anything like me, the arrival of colder weather means that I get back into my scrapping grove. Whether that's the case for you, or not, it's time to pull out your stuff and get busy again. This week's challenge is about the little bits of embellishments that tend to get thrown aside because they don't seem like they're good for anything but maybe cards, or smaller projects. For me, these smaller embellishments are great because I like to cluster my embellishments anyway. So, get them out, and get them onto your pages or projects. Cluster them in groups, or layer them onto your title or larger embellishments.

Here's my example:

Don't forget to come back and link your finished project up to here. I'm giving you two weeks to submit a project for this challenge. Infact, submit more. For every project linked up through Mr. Linky it will be put in a draw for a free prize. So, get creating, and submitting. I can't wait to see what you come up with.

Here's what the other Creative Contributors came up with for this challenge:

Joy

Like Barb I like to cluster and layer my embellishments.
I used scrap pieces to punch out circles, stamps & the last left over
pearls from another project. Gosh those hats are awful!





I used a lot of old stickers that I had!





Lynne

I had a lot of ribbon hanging around. I haven't really used ribbons in a very long time.


Monday, October 24, 2011

PUNCH IT OUT!

Get out those punches of yours and punch it up! Use your border punches and some of the fancy punches that you have in your stash! PUNCH IT OUT with your Layouts!



Barb
I don't have a lot of punches, but I do have the notebook punch and I love it. The only problem is that I don't get it out often enough, so thanks, Janet, for the reminder. Here's my layout for this challenge using the notebook punch.


Joy
I really enjoyed this challenge and got a bit punch happy. I cut out a bunch of 4's to
cover the background on this birthday card. I used some vintage photo distress ink around
the edges of the numbers to help them pop of the card base. I love those little monsters.




Lynne
Well unlike Barb, I have more punches than I will ever use. But they are an addiction. In this layout I used one of my many Fiskars border punches, a circle punch and a very old McGill leaf punch. Thanks for the challenge Janet. I got to use some punches. Woohoo!!







Monday, October 17, 2011

Challenge #7 - October Orange

So all of you that have known me for any length of time, you know my favorite color is ORANGE. So since this is my challenge , I figured I would use my favorite color with a few variations, plus one other color, TURQUOISE. Of course, black and or white is welcome in your layouts.
The only other twist I ask of you is to try an 8.5 x 11 layout (11 x 8. is even better). You can always mount this to a 12 x 12 paper later on and add more embellishments.

Here is your inspiration. I hope your think the colors are as pretty as I do.


Here is an example of what I did with these colors. (The orange is actually very vivid. Darn scan) Hope you like it.


I can't wait to see what the other ladies have come up with.

Janet



Joy

This week I added a few extra colours to the combo Lynne gave us and this layout evolved into a 2 page spread. Sometimes layouts take a different direction from the idea you started with.


Barb
I finally got mine done. I don't ever work in this size so it was a bit of a challenge, but I guess that's the whole idea of a challenge.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Challenge # 6~ Put YOUR Picture on it

Happy Thanksgiving! We hope are enjoying your holiday weekend.

Hello Use Your Stuff friends, we're glad you could stop by.

I'm changin' it up this week. I am not going to ask you to dig into your stash of goodies for something specific but I'm going to ask you to dig into your stash of photos.You can choose any of your favourite stuff this week (YAY!).....dig deep into your piles of photos and find one of you. That's right you.

I am challenging you to make a layout about yourself with some easy journaling, list style.
Come up with a list of 25 random facts about yourself and write or type them out and include that list on your layout.


Now the list might be the challenge for you this week just remember you can reference any part of your life that you wish. You are not confined or restricted, include anything that tells the reader about you.

So UYS creative crew, what did you come up with this week?

Lynne


Janet

 


Barb
I finally got around to doing this challenge, and what a challenge it was for me. It's hard to come up with 25 random facts! Anyway, I decided to do mine in the form of a Smash Book page. I love how it turned out.


Show us what you got!
Don't forget to share it, we love checking out your blogs.


Monday, October 3, 2011

Challenge #5 - Playing With Blocks

I love multi-photo layouts. Rarely do I do a layout with just one photo. To top it off, I'm a linear scrapper. Because of this, one of my favourite design techniques is to block my photos together to make them like one. Doing this allows me to use a lot of single photo sketches (especially if they're a 5x7 photo sketch) or single photo layouts for inspiration.So, my challenge for you this week is to block your photos together.Here's my example:

Janet


Joy





Lynne


Monday, September 26, 2011

Challenge #4 Mist it baby

Welcome back to another Use Your Stuff challenge, I'm excited to host my first challenge here.
This weeks the challenge is to get out your mists and use them on your layout or project.
Use it a lot or use it a little, make it sparkle or make it splatter or get out a paint brush and colour
your world.

Just mist it baby!

Here on my layout I used my October Afternoon sprinklers to spray my title
before I adhered it to my page.



It's time to check out what the other creative contributors made for this weeks challenge.

Joy
I created my own background using Mr. Huey's lemonade mist and a mask I cut on the Silhouette
called flower_4_petal_square. I can see myself using this technique quite a bit,
in card making and scrapbooking.


Lynne

I don't usually Mist anything. In fact I had ot find my mists. I had painted the chipboard arrows bright yellow as purple & yellow are the school colors for AlfredU. This layout is going in my daughters college album so I am trying to stick to those school colors. Anyway, the yellow color was too bright so I used Tattered Angels Graphite mist and dulled the color just enough. I see that am going to have to use my mists more often.

Barb
I finally got mine done for this challenge. I had some fun with my mists, but I used them a little differently. I didn't mist the background paper. I used my mists to colour my chipboard letters and the chipboard circle. I used two colours - glitter brown and orange. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice, but I really like the effect. They have a nice shimmer to them.
I also sprayed the mist on a sponge and used it to ink all around the edges of the layout and the journaling strips - again, it has a nice shimmer to it.
I will definately be playing with my shimmer mists again very soon.



It's now your turn to commit to the mist!

We love seeing your creations so don't forget use mr. linky below.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Color Challenge - Challenge #3

HI everyone. This is my first challenge and I thought since I have always been a huge fan of COLOR, I would host a color challenge on a monthly basis! . The more colors the better in my opinion.
I really don't want the warmer months to end, although I do love the autumn color palette too. So in honor of spring and summer colors, here are my color choices for September. Easy, fun colors. Enjoy!

Orange, Pink, Green, Yellow and Blue

And here is my example. See.....now don't you fell all warm inside. When you are done with this challenge, you can think about Fall, OK?



Let's see what the other ladies come up with.

Joy
I couldn't get all 5 colours on one card so I made four.


Barb
Of course I couldn't use these colours without it being a beach theme.
Here it is:

Janet



Don't forget to use Mr. Linky below to show us your project, you could be featured on
the Use Your Stuff blog.