Waste Not, Want Not

My dear sister Emily has a reputation for being frugal. If you ever go shopping with her, she will probably have a coupon you can use, no matter what store you are in. And she scores the most amazing deals (see $0.11 dog costume) and has the patience and forethought to buy things after a holiday and put them away for the following year. See what I mean? Frugal.

Me on the other hand, I'm cheap. Miserly even.

This is why I resisted scrapbooking for so long. I'm terrified that once I start buying the fancy papers and pens, there will be no stopping until I single handedly deforest the earth.

But I did make some cards this week that appealed to my penny-pinching ways. I used basic cardstock - you could fancy this up with some nicer papers or embellishments, but the idea is the same. Try to find two paper designs where the scraps from one card can be used on the second, and vice versa.

(If you didn't believe I was cheap before, please note the cassette tape that I have never replaced with a CD. Please also note that I was still buying cassette tapes well into the 90's because I didn't want to buy a new stereo or spend $3 extra for a CD... but I digress)

I traced the REM tape to cut windows out of my cards. The cheapness comes in when you switch around the colors and use the window scraps to make little trees and ornaments. I happened to have a sheet of yellow cardstock on hand for the stars and mini-ornaments. Otherwise, I probably would have cut these out of tin foil.

I have a star shaped hole punch, so I could make quick work of the tree toppers. Gluing two stars back to back on either side of the tree & window frame made this look a bit neater on the inside.

I made the ornaments using a circle punch for the little ones and by tracing a drinking glass for the big one. Oblong or fancy shaped ornaments would be cool, but then you need to find something else to trace.

The ornaments are actually glued in place, but I "hung" them using actual tree hooks cut to length and twisted around the ornament. A large sewing needle works for making the holes to hang them from if you are too cheap to buy a mini-punch (as I am). Silver or gold ornament hooks would have been more interesting, but I bought these green ones a few years ago and I'm not going to spend $0.59 on another package before I need to. I have a few left to hang, so I might try paper clips for the next batch. They're silver, right?