Stretching Your Supplies
I'll admit that I can be a pretty frugal scrapbooker. I am always thinking of ways to get the most use out of my supplies because it means that they will last me longer, which is always a good thing when you're afraid to run out of some favorite items.
If you are feeling frugal, try stretching the use of your embellishments by cutting them in half. This may sound funny at first, but you'll be surprised at how embellishments can still maintain their visual impact when half of them appear on a project. Take the Making Memories blossoms for instance. You'll double their quantity by cutting them in half, and they can still look interesting on a layout if you make them appear as though they are tucked behind other page elements. On my layout below, I placed my cut blossoms along a the edge of a photo. It appears as though I tucked full blossoms underneath my main photo, but in reality only half of a blossom exists in each spot.
I duplicated this look on a card by placing the blossoms along the edge of ribbon. The blossoms still maintain their impact, and I used half the amount that I needed to. The total amount of blossoms I used for both my layout and card is five and a half, which means I still had several blossoms left over for other projects.
You can try this technique with several other items such as buttons, ribbons, chipboard shapes and rub-ons. If any part of an embellishment will be placed under other page elements, preserve the hidden piece by trimming it off so that you can save it for another project. You'll be surprised at how long one package of embellishments will last you.
If you want to learn more about the supplies that I used on my projects, check out Making Memories website.
