Using your stash: a layout for less than $ 1.00 by Ingeborg Dijkstra

In the last few months I have made a few layouts for less than $ 1.00 and today I made another one. I love buying new scrapbooking products, but I do like to challenge myself to use my stash a bit more often too! I used a sheet of black cardstock as a base for this layout.

The picture is of my husband on his 40th birthday, which I took when we were on our holiday in Spain a few weeks ago. I still love him as much now at 40 as I did in my early twenties and I still think he is as handsome too (but I am a little biased I suppose ... ).

Oh well ... back to the layout. I have seen a very similar design years ago and decided it was time for me to try it. I normally give credit to the person whom I was inspired by, but I have no idea who it was. If it was you, please email me, so I can add your name to this post!

I cut the picture to a square of 10 cm x 10 cm. I placed it exactly in the middle of the black cardstock. I wanted to create a clean design and starting with a picture right in the middle seemed to be a good start!

I looked through my boxes and folders of scraps with paper both plain and patterned. I chose a few different papers for each colour. I found that smaller patterns on the paper worked better than larger patterns, because I was only going to use small pieces of it. I used my two square punches to punch the two sizes of squares in each colour. I used a Sizzix die to cut the rectangles. Tan has a variety of square punches in her store. I probably use my square punches more than any other punch, so make sure you check HERE to see what Tan has to offer!

I printed my title to stay with my 'budget' of $ 1.00 and made sure that I cut the title strip at 10 cm to fit exactly under the photo. I put the coloured squares and rectangle around the photo. The layout first looked like this:

I went through all my little boxes, bags, cans, baskets and bottles to see if I could find matching embellishments. It actually was fun to go through some of that stuff, because I have found lots of things that I completely forgot I had! I added buttons, chipboard, flowers, pearls and rhinestones. This is the final result: