"Rags to Riches"

I am a hoarder. There I said it! I have piles of boxes, jars and tins all over my craftroom. The other day I finished up a box of rice and looked at it and said hhhmmmm....My hubby was like "You are not going to keep that are you?" I told him I most certainly was. Well today was a milestone for me because I actually used something that I have been hoarding out of my stash. I constantly pick things up at the store and say "Oh I could do this...Oh I could do that" but you know what it just ends up in a pile in my craftroom. So I am going to try to turn over a new leaf and ACTUALLy use the things I save. Since I am in the middle of a remodel on my craftroom I figured I would make some little tool caddies to put on my desk.

I spray painted the box black to cover up the writting. The funny part of that is I didn't plan to and I just decided to try it quickly so of course I wasn't prepared the right way. I had to do 2 layers since I dropped it and caught it putting a big hand print in it (you can see the smudge above). Making a long story short it was all over my hands. I scrubbed and scrubbed and got most of it off but not all of it. Well right before my hubby left for work we were sitting down eating and I had just came back from changing the girls diapers. All of a sudden he looks at me completely horrified as I am shoveling food in my mouth and says "WHAT is all over your hands???" LOL...he thought it was poop! I couldn't get out the spray paint from all the creavices in my nails etc. so it was still stuck there...oh well!

Anyways I based this little project off of a couple of challenges. The challenge over at AllSorts was to alter or recycle something. This challenge was right up my alley!! I had all of these beautiful papers picked out and then I decided to make it completely out of scraps..it was called Rags to Riches afterall! Plus it always makes my heart flitter when I use my scraps!! The challenge over at
The Cuttlebug Spot was to celebrate their colors which are green, pink and black. I did the color scheme around that. I used my Cuttlebug to cut out the Nesties for the bottom two layers and emboss them with my Swiss dot folder. I made a pin wheel flower out of scraps. I started out using some scraps that I normally would use for a trial run but then I decided to keep it because it matched pretty well. I stamped the solid background paper with my PK-101 Medium Polka Dot Print stamp. Added some MS adhesive ribbon along the top and bottom edge, mounted the flower in the center and gave that some dimension by using pop dots.

Not bad for something I was gonna throw away!

The challenge over at The Pink Elephant was pastels so I thought this fit it nicely. I also entered it into the Everybody_Art and
papertake Weekly Spring Challenges.