Welcome my crafty friends to the inaugural edition of my new hop group, Squirrels Gone Nuts!!! I became quite close with several of the members of the Collected Crafty Collabs group and we all wanted to continue on finding fun ways of using our stash through the new year. So my Squirrel Sisters (Anna, Marie, and V) and I nominated a few gals to be Honorary Squirrels (Bory, Lounon, and Natasha) and we set about creating a new set of prompts for each month of the year. There will always be a theme for the month along with either a supply or technique. And being a much smaller group it will be easier and less daunting to our viewers to hop along and see all the inspiration! We plan to have a guest in some of the coming months, but even then the hop size will be manageable. So let’s get to it, shall we?

The Monthly Prompt: The theme for January is “New” (could be new year, new baby, new home, new you, etc) the supply requirement is to use Leftovers… you know, backgrounds, images, die cuts, etc that you created for a previous project and never used or maybe you had extras leftover. Even paper scraps are leftovers! We all had baggies, bins, bowls or boxes of leftovers, so time to use some of them for a project!!!

You should have arrived here from Anna who is kicking off the festivities today! And here is the full lineup for today:

• Anna Mahtani
• Karen Page – YOU ARE HERE
• Marie Bingaman
• V Fairchild
• Lounon Riviere
• Boryana Yankova
• Natasha Davies

I am notorious for making backgrounds and then not using them. My stash of previously made backgrounds was easily 6″ thick or more. I dug through the stash and picked out several with stars or starbursts as those remind me of celebrations and I wanted to make New Year’s cards. Here was what I started with (the white piece is embossed with an embossing folder), though I didn’t use everything shown:

Let’s start with the rainbow card! It started off as that plain bristol paper embossed with a folder from Darice called Star Border.

Once I ink blended some Distress Oxides on top of that embossing, it went from boring to shazam! All I needed at that point was a sentiment, which I made from a scrap of silver mirror cardstock using dies from Sizzix called Christmas Phrases. I found a star die in my stash from a magazine freebie and cut out a few to sprinkle around the card accenting the embossed stars. I matted the panel on more of the silver mirror paper for some added shine, but true to my nature, I cut a rectangle out of the middle to use for future sentiments. The card felt like it needed just a little something extra, so I added some clear rhinestones and I love how this card turned out!!! Now let’s look at the blue card…

This was a simple stencil background using Kaleidoscope Stencil A from Altenew with 3 shades of Distress Oxides… Chipped Sapphire, Mermaid Lagoon, and Tumbled Glass. I used a thin frame die, also from Altenew, from their Fine Frames Cover die and cut another sentiment out of the same scrap of silver mirror cardstock I used in the first card. A couple more stars, and I thought that was enough on this busy background! I opted to glue everything down flat on these 2 cards to keep them simple, but then I got crazy with the cheeze whiz (sorry, song lyric from Loser by Bexk, circa 1994, that has been stuck in my head ever since) for the final card!!! LOL!

For this card I channeled my inner Jennifer McGuire and made an acetate card. This started out as an embossed background stamp that had either ink or watercolor over it. Its at least 3 years old, so no telling! I certainly can’t remember!!! The stamp is from Impression Obsession and its a Cover a Card background aptly called Starburst. I used an old set of Spellbinders Pinking Circles to die cut out the piece on the front and another from fun foam to pop it up. I placed the negative piece on the inside. Now, ala JM I also cut 2 more pinking circles… 1 to cover the adhesive on the inside of the card front (which is also where I will write my sentiment) and another to fit inside the aperture on the inside. And I backed the card with a full panel of white 110 lb cardstock to cover the adhesive there too. The Cheers sentiment from MFT’s Hand-Lettered Holiday was heat embossed on vellum and die cut to match. The inside image is from fun cocktail set from Stampin’ Up! called Making Spirits Bright, which is colored with Prismacolor pencils. I added a handful of clear sparkling sequins from Pretty Pink Posh to dress it up. I love how well the stamps from 3 different companies came together for this card. Its fairly simple but so different from store bought cards that its special even if it is simple!

I wasn’t planning on making 3 cards but its just kinda part of my process to have more than 1 possible card in the works for any assignment in case something doesn’t turn out. And frankly, after pulling them out, I just didn’t want to stash these backgrounds again. Oh, and the other 2 papers from that first pic? Yeah, lets just say there is a good reason I have more than 1 card going for each assignment. They definitely didn’t turn out. That’s it for me… time for you to head to Marie’s blog!

You are going to love my Squirrel Sister Marie’s take on the theme!!! If you are inspired to play along with our monthly theme, be sure to use #SquirrelsGoneNutz when you post so we can see your projects! Thanks for visiting and be sure to see what the rest of my scurry of squirrels have for you today!!!