Going Green

Happy St. Patrick's day everyone!  Hope you are wearing your green today.  :)  In honor of this day I want to talk a little bit about "going green."  It's so "in" right now...but it is also a tough economy right now and every little thing we can do to help keep costs down is good.  

I don't worry much about going green with my scrapbooking simply because I have a room FULL of products.  I need to use them so I don't really have to get creative with the stuff I can find.  But I also like to include non-scrapbooking stuff on my pages.  

Here are some ideas for going green or saving costs on your pages:

1.  Use your scrapbook products packaging.  Products often come with a cute cardboard backing.  You could even use the plastic wrapping...try punching some shapes through it.  

2.  Lots of items you buy at the store are packaged with ribbon, charms, keychain labels...all stuff you can take off and use in your scrapbooking!  

3.  When clothes get ruined (I am in a household of boys who constantly ruin clothes), salvage the buttons, zippers, and even portions of the fabric.  You can use these!  :)  

4.  Save memorabilia from the places you go (i.e. tickets, programs, receipts, fortunes).  

5.  Try digital scrapbooking or even hybrid scrapbooking.  

6.  Go through your junk mail.  I have cut a portion of an ad and used it on a card before...it was too cute to just throw away.

7.  Create a 3D scrapbook "page" in an old bottle or something else you would have just thrown out.  

8.  When your jewelry breaks and you don't plan on getting it fixed (happens to me all the time...I do have cheap jewelry though), save it and use it on your projects!  I even will get jewelry sometimes that comes with a cute necklace and earrings...well I don't have my ears pierced but I will wear the necklace and the earrings immediately go down to my scrapbook room.  :)  

9.  Use nature.  Find pieces of sticks, leaves...whatever and use it!  

10.  Use cardboard from boxes that you receive in the mail.  

11.  Instead of buying orgainzational items for your supplies, repurpose old jars or containers for your products to be stored in.  

12.  Instead of buying new stamps, find things around the house to use as stamps (toilet paper roll to stamp a circle, bubble wrap, bottom of shoe...)

13.  And the ultimate way to go green--recycle!  Save all your scraps instead of throwing them away.  

You will be amazed at what you can find when you keep your eyes open for stuff you can use on your projects.  And remember, you can pretty much repurpose anything.  

Here's a layout that I just finished.  When I was a kid, the fortunes in fortune cookies were actually fortunes.  You know, like "You will make a new friend today."  You would even find negative ones like "A friend is going to betray you."  Anybody with me on this?  Well now days, the fortunes are not really fortunes at all.  So many of them don't even make sense, but those that do are not fortunes at all but perhaps a saying or a piece of wisdom.  I made a page about this.  :)  I even used a bunch of actual fortunes from fortune cookies that I had been collecting.  

Here's the page:

I played along with the Make It Yours challenge at Scrapbooks, Etc. this week.  This layout was inspired by a layout by Jen Jockisch that they have on the site.  

The papers are all from GCD Studios.  

I messed up my journaling and had to paint over it and re-do it.  Not completely sure how much I like the finished look of it but I am ok with it.  :)

I tried to make the straight pins in the flowers look like chopsticks.  :)  

Supplies:

Papers--GCD Studios, Chipboard--Maya Road, Flowers--Studio Calico, Foam Letters--American Crafts, Rhinestone Flowers--Kaiser Scrapbook, Glimmer Mist (on chipboard)--Tattered Angels, Paint--Making Memories, Glitter--Stickles from Ranger, Straight Pins--unknown, Thread--DMC, Black Sharpie.