No More Shopping Sins! - OCC's January Challenge

Welcome back, dear crafting friends :)

As you may well remember, the 1st of each month is a double-feature day over here, as I present two new challenges: the one at Our Creative Corner and the other at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges (please, come back a little later to learn more about this one).

Yep, you read the headline right - the first challenge of the year over at Our Creative Corner is all about new years resolutions (which are mostly hard to keep as we all know ;). If you want to read more about the idea behind this challenge, I would recommend you hop over to our challenge blog to have a closer look (also at the fab makes of the whole Design Team of course ;). There's a lot of new great stuff going on at OCC  too in 2014 (for example: from now on the whole team present their makes on the first of the month - so there will be twice as much inspiration at one go as there has been before - but Laura has been busy organizing and working on some more new features that will make OCC an even more fab place in the new year than it has already been ;).

It is my special honour to host the very first challenge of 2014, which is:

No More Shopping Sins!

This means that I want you to 

use some of your long hoarded 

and never before used stash 

for your projects. 

We all know what I am talking about: you see something, you (really) NEED it, you buy it and you love it so much ...and then you don't use it because it is so very special you want to use it on the ONE project only.... just that exactly this one doesn't come along. ;)

And in the meantime you buy more of this love-able stuff and your guilt grows... so I decided to get rid of that secretly gnawing guilt of buying new stuff although I haven't used a lot of the old stuff - simply by finally using it. Yes, it is that easy *lol. 






I had a small lot of vintage dictionary pages I bought one and a half years ago and haven't used ever since as they are sooo beautiful. ;)














I also had some Tim Holtz mini numerals 
and some Prima and BoBunny paper pads which were still untouched.







It became a lot easier for me after I had cut the first page into shape (using the "Artful Dwellings" Sizzix die)!

From then I had a wonderful time cutting, stamping, layering, glueing and playing around with a lot of fab stuff - I hope this becomes a bit visible with my make too ;)

I stamped the "Los Tres Caballeros" stamp onto some white card and cut out the faces. I glued the dictionary paper shapes onto some pages from the paper pads and cut out the shapes leaving about half a centimeter's width. Then I distressed and inked the edges before I started embellishing.

I stamped some numbers (from a X-mas stamp set for making an advent calendar) in
red and gave the cut out circles a coat of DecoArt Triple Thick (awesome stuff, wow!). I found while stamping that I seem to have an affection for prime numbers (well, I am married to a maths genius by the way...;).

I also used some washi tape and some long forgotten sticky lace tape I had bought at the very beginnings of my crafting career.

I gave the finished panels some spritzes of various spray paints to add a bit of a weathered look.

To fuse all four panels I used some rough ribbon, which I glued between the front and backsides of the panels. Done! 

 

I hope you will not only use the new stuff you got for X-mas but also give some of your old treasures a chance to come to life!!! So I look forward to seeing your projects entered with our challenge at OCC soon! 

And I also hope you will come back for more challenge fun in two hours to learn more about the new challenge over at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges too (where it is all about the new stuff - yay ;)!

Hugs and happy crafting for 2014! 

Claudia x