It’s Fun Friday and we have three creative projects for you today — a stamp craft, a card, AND a layout!  First, we’d like to share an email we received last month.  Hero Arts customer Anita Recksiedler wrote in with a fantastic eco-friendly idea…

Dear Hero Arts Blog,

I am really excited to share something with you! At the end of March, you had lots of ideas for making window cards and shaker cards. Yesterday I finally sat down and made my first shaker card. It was so much fun. I thought of all the shaker cards I wanted to make and how I only bought one piece of acetate at the craft store, and how it was $2! Then later as I was snacking on my daughter’s Easter bunny I noticed that the window to the box was made of acetate! All her bunnies boxes was made of acetate! I thought of course of you guys (and how you love to recycle!) and all the other Hero Arts followers of the blog who would benefit from this! A lot of people will have leftover boxes from the bunnies from the weekend and we can ‘harvest’ acetate from them! Recycle and save money! And make a lot more shaker and window cards! Well I better go and make more cards using my recycled acetate!

Anita Recksiedler

Such a great idea — thanks to Anita for sharing it with us!

Speaking of packaging, Kandis Smith has a super cute and clever way to reuse an empty plastic package from some scrapbook embellishments. Kandis says, “I’m constantly trying to find cute ways to say ‘thanks’ to my friends. And who doesn’t love a little treat?? Using old embellishment packaging is a fun way to make your gift. It was super easy to trace the paper lining and then stamp, decorate, and fill! Once I found one I started digging through my baskets to find more!”

Here’s the (would-be) trash…

And here’s the finished product — so sweet!

Supplies:

• Young Deer
• Clear Design: Friends
• Dots and Flowers
• Memories Artprint Brown Ink
• Pumpkin Patch Chalk Ink Queue
• Orange Gemstones
• Versamark
• White Embossing Powder
• Ranger Diamond Stickles
• Other: cardstock (Bazzill), patterned paper (Cosmo Cricket), ribbon (Micheal’s), button (Basic Grey), jute (Darice), packaging (Heidi Swapp)

So far this week the Web Artists have discovered some great recycled patterned paper alternatives like tissue boxes and security envelopes.  Kelly Rasmussen came up with yet another creative paper source — old catalogs!

Kelly shares, “I get a lot of inspiration from home decorating catalogs, so as I was flipping through the pages of an old Pottery Barn catalog, I came across this awesome page of  fabric swatches that I just had to use. I punched 1/2″ circles from several different patterns to create the flower on my card. I also used part of a cardboard box to create the brown frame. I cut out the circle using my Cuttlebug and Nestabilities and then embossed the woodgrain pattern with clear embossing powder…I just love how this almost looks like real wood! It felt so good to create a card using items that I would have otherwise just thrown away.”

Trash…

…transformed! Love that cute little flower Kelly created!

Supplies:

• Clear Design: Everyday Sayings
• Designer Woodgrain
• Baby Blue & Green Apple Notecards
• Light Blue Gemstones
• Clear Embossing Powder
• Versamark
• Chocolates & Blueberries Chalk Ink Queue
• Other: scallop square and circle dies (Nestabilities), ½” circle punch, ribbon (Michael’s), white cardstock, pop dots, cardboard box, Pottery Barn Kids catalog

Kelly’s Tips:

• Using cardboard gives your cards dimension without even using pop dots. And you can easily change the color, just by sponging on your favorite ink color.
• Before throwing away old catalogs or magazines, flip through the pages and punch out shapes (such as circles and butterflies) of different patterns to use on future projects.

And finally, today we leave you with an absolutely beautiful layout from Robyn Werlich featuring reused tissue paper. Here’s Robyn with more: “I received a package of some things that I bought on ETSY and they were wrapped in this kraft colored tissue paper. It was all folded up and as I went to throw it in the garbage, I realized that it would be so cute to stamp on. It is a bit transparent, so I cut two pieces and layered them on top of each other.”

“I stamped the background stamps with brown ink on the tissue paper and sewed the sheets onto the page. I also tore a small circle and layered it on top of the flower (which was stamped with the Raindrop Background stamp and embossed with green embossing powder).”

Supplies:

• Clear Design: Captions Messages
• Dots and Flowers
• Old Letter Writing
• Raindrop Background
• White Embossing Powder
• Versamark
  
• Card Buttons Neutral
• Smooth Clear Gemstones
• Other: cardstock, sewing machine, pink flower, green embossing powder, kraft tissue paper

Thanks so much for the great green ideas Robyn, Kelly and Kandis!

That wraps up our Fun Friday, but be sure to stop by the blog tomorrow! In addition to our regular weekly wrap-up, we’ll have an extra special post devoted to a wonderful cause — the Cards for Heroes Blog Hop.  (I hear there will be a giveaway, too, so hop on by!)

See you tomorrow!

Filed under: gogreen

This entry was posted on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Fun Fridays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.