Borrowing a beauty addicts idea

I must admit I do not know who first came up with the idea, but the spending ban has been a bit hard this week, so i did some googling for inspiration. I've found that the majority of people who go on a ban are actually beauty bloggers (in fact I seem to be the only one who is a craft addict on a ban!) but the ideas they have do translate to my predicament. The one that helped me through this week: shopping your stash.

The premise is simple; if you feel the urge to spend (easy with the amount of adverts that we are exposed to on a daily basis, not to mention the offers) then what you do is you go to your make up/ toiletry/ wardrobe, or in my case, craft, stash, and re-discover things that you had forgotten you had. Amazingly, it does work. I'm working on a project at the moment (have not finished so it will remain a secret until I have done) and was contemplating buying things to add to it. Instead I went through my stash and found what I needed! I have also gone through my jewellry findings and come up with some ideas for things that I was at a loss for when I got them.

That said, I do still want that trolley from Ikea. My room is a bit of a tip at the moment so it would really help my organisational skills! Now onto the makes!

I have been working mainly on the photo stitch, and have almost finished the third page of it. I will post a pic up when I have done so.

There are two makes though. The first is another tag.

Again the wrong time of year for it, but I wanted to do something with snowflakes. I distress inked the background with blue china and faded jeans, then added some silver snowflake stickers. The blue snowflakes are wooden snowflakes, with blue glitter and glossy accents on them. (I love glossy accents!) The word snow is chipboard letters with shaded lilac distress ink and glossy accents. I then tried a technique that Tim Holtz did on a tag from a while ago. What you do is you alcohol ink a fragment, let it dry, then stamp your chosen image in black ink and immediately blot it off with a cloth. The theory is that it will remove both inks. You then put white card on the back. It didn't quite work how I wanted it, in fact it didn't work at all to begin with. I went to scrub it off with water to try again and the top snowflake worked! So I decided to keep it. The top fragment is another technique. You edge the fragment with alcohol ink, then add a little glitter glue and some glossy accents. Again, it didn't work out quite the way I wanted; I think next time I will omit the ink and just use the glitter glue and glossy accents. Finally I added a metal snowflake charm onto the fragment.

The second item is more seasonal.

I decided to use the sea as inspiration to make a box! Believe it or not, the netting is actually part of a shower puff (unused of course!). I added some beads twisted on wire to look like fish, then made some shells and starfish out of polymer clay and mica powder. Finally I made three charms, by getting some metallic charms, beads and glitter, putting them in some cameo things that my mate Louise gave me for my birthday, and then sticking glossy accents into it to make it a proper charm.

Anyway, there are the makes for this week. At least concentrating on making things is keeping my bank balance in the black!

Emma x

Spending ban Numb3rs episode count: 59/118