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Happy Sunday Everyone,

Every year I set myself three crafting targets: 1) to create more scrap pages, 2) to use up more, much more, from the stash I've already accumulated, 3) buy no more patterned paper until I've made a serious dent in what is already in the craft room. Every year I fail miserably! Oh, I start out full of enthusiasm but then I struggle with choosing all the items, patterned paper, cardstock, embellishments, etc., that would/should work on the intended layout(s) so my output/inclination quickly declines. Rather more quickly, it has to be said, than my already massive collection of pretty patterned paper. It's pathetic! However, I think I may have discovered a resource that will make the process so much easier ... that's the Use Your Stash site.

The aim of Use Your Stash is to provide ideas and inspiration on how to use supplies already in our stash. It is also the home of the free to join Scrap Stash Kit Club, where we are encouraged to make a kit, simply based on suggested colour theme, from our stash every month and use old items to create great pages. I found the process of going through my stash looking for particular colours much the easiest method I have tried so far ... above you can see the small 'kit' I picked out using the colours suggested for January.

Together with this inspirational sketch found on Laura Whitaker Designs - a blog that has tons of great sketches - I created this page to celebrate how thrilled my grandson,William, and his girlfriend, Heather, were to discover that the baby they are expecting in June is a boy. It's their first child and my third great-grandchild!

Apart from the 12"x12" size blue patterned design, a very old Anna Griffin design spotted going for a song in my local craft shop last summer, all the other patterned paper is from the A4 size Katie Castillo Love pack by Scrapbook Max! which came free in the current issue, 87, of Scrapbook Magazine. (As I subscribe to this magazine I now have a drawer full of these kits which I am determined to either use or toss this year!) The cut out hearts and labels also came from the pack.

The title letters are a mix of white felt alpha stickers (Hobbycraft) and Simply Sweet Blue Jean stickers (Doodlebug Design). As I didn't have enough of any of the letters to make up the title I used a combination of colours and case ... in the end I think it worked out well, fitting nicely around the photos.

The little wooden babygro, wooden hearts, blue dew drops (Papermania), and small white doily used to finish the layout were found in various drawers, jars, tins and packets in the craft room - I'm such a hoarder! The babygro was coloured with Memento Danube Blue ink. The date label is from a pack of Miss Caroline stickers. I used two circle dies to create the 'halo' from a snippet of white cardstock.

There's quite a bit of the 'kit' left so I may make a card from some of the leftover scraps ... the theme of the patterned paper is perfect for a Valentine's Day card. Whatever is left after that will be returned to my crafty stash then it will be on to picking out the next 'kit' based on the February colour theme. A bigger one this time so that I can make more than one scrap page and at the same time use up even more stash :)

Not a lot of snippets used ... well, just the one for the 'halo' ... but that's enough to give me reason, as is my usual on Sunday, to pop over to Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 163.

We woke up to a frost covered garden today but it was also bright and sunny with the bluest of skies - our kind of perfect winter's day - hope yours was as good.

Thank you for popping in again today. I wish you a very good week ahead.

Take care, stay safe and stay warm.

Happy Crafting,