Yes, I really am here with another installment of Back to the Future! It's been a long time since the last one, and if you're a new reader (welcome, and thank you!), this is a relatively new blog segment for me where I take a hot new scrapbooking collection and combine it with supplies from the archives of gone-but-not-forgotten favorites.
I also apparently like to see how many times I can use the word "new" in a single paragraph.
The last round found me taking an entire new collection and using it with an entire old collection, but this time I'm shaking things up a little bit. After my last guest appearance on The Paperclipping Roundtable, I received lots of comments from people who were intrigued by my "just buying the embellishments" strategy for shopping for supplies. The theory is that I have lots and lots of paper, and I tend to be a B-side scrapper, anyway, as I found out while sorting my patterned papers by color last month, so I should be able to find ample basic prints in my scrap room such as dots, stripes, damasks, and grids, to coordinate with key embellishments from new collections. The idea is to buy just a few pieces- chipboard, journaling cards, tags, etc.- that carry the "feel" of a collection and then fill in the blanks from stash.
And, because I know I've been posting a lot of non-layout stuff lately (though I do love writing tutorials and sharing quick tips and tricks!), I promise that there is indeed a layout hidden in this photo-heavy post. In fact, here's a little peek at what you'll be seeing later!
I've been trying to use my stash more this year and scale the shopping way back. It took me a bit to get into the groove of letting most of my new supplies come from my monthly design team kits at Citrus Twist, but I'm happy to finally be there and loving having the chance to finally get to some of those older pretties that are in my scrap room.
I do also get a small amount of credit from Two Peas each month, and that's where the new supplies in this post came from. I challenged myself to use that credit to get the items that most conveyed the look of the four new My Mind's Eye mid-release collections by ordering just the chipboard and cut apart sheets (I chop them up and use them like embellishments) from each and filling in the rest with my stash. I can't disclose just how much credit I get, but before that credit was applied my order was just over $26 after my 10% loyalty discount (which I'm sure I won't have much longer since I'm shopping way less than I did last year). I also pay shipping on orders when I use my Garden Girl credit. So, there you go- full disclosure. :)
My box contained chipboard and journaling card papers for both of the Kate & Company colorways...
...along with the chipboard and two cut apart sheets for each of Rhonna Farrer's new Find Your Wings and Fly collection colorways.
It actually feels like quite a good amount of stuff for $26, especially when each of those chipboard sheets contains 50+ pieces. One 12x12 chipboard set will embellish a lot of layouts!
I decided to go with the Up and Away portion of Find Your Wings and Fly (the items in the photos above) for this installment of Back to the Future, and I spent about 10 minutes looking through my Cropper Hoppers of color-sorted papers for sheets to match. I didn't look for "perfect" matches, just whatever caught my eye as I flipped through the stack.
There were tons of pinks that would have worked, but I stopped myself after the first four sheets that I found. The papers are from the following collections, left to right: Lily Bee's Victoria Park, Daydream by October Afternoon, DCWV's Spring Fling Stack, and Upcycle by Cosmo Cricket.
The teals were fun to go through, too! I found four papers here...well, three papers and one transparency. :) Lily Bee Memorandum, American Crafts The Classics, October Afternoon Detours, Hambly Screen Prints.
There were small hints of a yellow-green and a red-orange color in the patterns, so I chose just a couple of papers representing each those colors, too. I think the first page is from a MAMBI pad from Michaels a few years ago, then from left to right there's a sheet from the Project Life Olive Edition paper, Studio Calico State Fair, and the My Mind's Eye Lost and Found 180 sheet paper pad from Hobby Lobby.
I also went through my "multi-color" stack (which is not as big as you might think!) and pulled out a couple of sheets that worked. From Lily Bee Memorandum and the My Mind's Eye Lost and Found 180 sheet paper pad.
Last, I dove into my neutral papers and picked out a few for backgrounds and layers. Lawn Fawn's Bright Side collection, Stella and Rose by MME (from the rebranded Recollections paper pad at Michaels), Chatterbox Woods Fern, Dear Lizzy Neapolitan, Echo Park This & That, MME Lost and Found (again), Studio Calico, and a sheet of Amy Tangerine (the original collection) stitched paper that I've been hoarding for a while.
Obviously all of these papers won't get used on one layout, but I'll be keeping them together with the Find Your Wings and Fly chipboard and cut-apart sheet as a "kit" of sorts. I kept things simple and didn't pull out any embellishments (besides the chipboard I'd purchased) to go with these. I already store my embellishments, journaling cards, and washi tapes by color and will be able to find a match for these papers easily enough as I'm working on a page. Besides, it's easier to store the flat stuff all together in a Cropper Hopper and let the lumpy items stay in their drawers.
And here's the layout made with this cobbled-together kit!
I started with my two photos, the really big floral chipboard piece from Find Your Wings and Fly, and the gold doily, then just started adding strips and bits from there until I was happy with it. Looking at it now that text print background might be just a bit too busy, but it just fit so well with the theme of the page that I wanted to use it. May was totally geeked out to meet the founder and owner of French General at CHA, so I made sure to use several of the French General embellishments by Jolee's on the page, too.
The gold glitter Thickers from the Maggie Holmes collection are the only other "new" item I used on the page, and the one pack I have is getting so close to the end that I counted it as stashbusting, anyway. I totally had to cut some letters apart to make the "a" and "r"!
I'm planning on making similar kits and layouts with the other three embellishment sets that I purchased and will be sharing them here when get to them. I'm not sure when that will be, but this little exercise has helped me realize just how far a small set of new supplies can go, and I'm excited to dive back in and try the next one!