Mission: Stash Reduction

Do you remember the show "Mission Impossible"? At the beginning, Mr. Phelps would receive a message explaining the situation and prompting a decision whether or not to accept the mission. This is the scenario I'm imagining myself in right now...

"Good morning, Immi. You have before you a stash of paper crafting products. Some of these products were purchased for specific projects, never completed. Others were purchased on a whim, and now you can't remember why. Your mission, Immi, should you choose to accept it, is to reduce this stash. In order to accomplish this task, you will need a two-pronged approach. One, you must think of ways to use these products; two, you will need to get busy creating. This tape will self destruct in five seconds.....

Okay, so it's more than a little silly, but I really have been in the mood to do some stash reduction. I see this topic come up often on blogs, so I know I'm not alone in my struggle. When you've been crafting for a while, you tend to accumulate lots of "stuff". When the stuff starts to become stressful, it's time to clean house! That's the idea behind my plan to begin showing some of the projects I'm doing to work towards this goal. As I'm doing it, I also plan to work in sessions of taking a good hard look at what to keep and what to purge.

Here are some cards I made recently. These will go to Operation Write Home. As you can see, I used up lots of little odds & ends and had some fun at the same time. The tags used on these cards all came from the Dollar Spot at Target. The sentiments on the cards are from stamp sets made by Hero Arts with Operation Write Home in mind.

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I'll be back soon with more cards to share. Until then, Happy Crafting!

Immi

Spring Wreath

I decided it was time for a new spring wreath, so I headed to my favorite site for inspiration, Pinterest. There are so many ideas available, and it's easy to get lost looking around. I really liked an idea I saw for a wreath made from a garden hose.

I headed to Walmart and found an inexpensive hose and pair of colorful garden gloves. I took a look at the artificial flowers they had available, but didn't see anything I liked. Then it was off to Hobby Lobby, and lucky for me, all artificial flowers were 50% off! I took the gloves in with me to help me choose colors, and settled on hot pink, yellow and white. I was hoping to find some wired ribbon in orange, but they didn't have any. Instead, I found a spool of bright orange tulle ribbon, which I knew would be very easy to use.

I had some green wire at home left over from other projects, so that's what I used to hold the hose together (it doesn't look very pretty from the back side!). I cut all the flowers apart (they had come in bunches) to make my bouquet. I wired all that together, then placed the gloves on top. I cut three lengths of the tulle ribbon and tied everything together with a big, fluffy bow. After wiring the bouquet to the wreath, it was ready to hang on the door.

This turned out to be a fairly easy project, and only took me part of an afternoon to complete. I'm enjoying the bright colors!

Happy crafting,
Immi