Use Your Stash Challenge

How big is your stash? I can tell you that after 19 years of scrappin', I have enough bits and pieces to scrap for 6 years without buying anything but adhesive and page protectors. I say, it's about time I get inspired to use it! 

   

As some of you know I have been planning retreats for years with my favorite friend Wanda, and at each retreat we have tried to come up with a challenge to inspire our scrappers. We, however, have never actually had the time to play any of the games ourselves. Lately, I have been feeling so uninspired and finding myself copying the layout sketches I use, almost to the letter, and that is not what scrapbooking is to me. 

    SO... the gauntlet has been laid down. We have challenged each other to use what we have been hoarding, stashing and buying for the past 20 years. 

   We have assigned points to every kind of scrapbook embellishment or paper we could think of, 100 points being assigned to items we find hard or impossible for us to use like metallic thread or preprinted diecuts, and all the way down to 10 points for those that we have stashed so many of and use often, like brads. 

    The challenge runs for a period of one year. We keep score of our own pages and have to show them off at the monthly hostess club we have going this year. The winner gets a pedicure on the losers dime. ( We thought it might be fun to have the loser carry the winners stuff into the spring retreat, but we both decided that would be counter productive since the object is to have less stuff to carry next year!)

    Thus far, I am in the lead, but for me it really is more about using my stuff and completing as many inspired pages as I can do. We are both having a blast rediscovering new ways to use the things we never thought we would use again.  I am finding inspiration in a pre printed die cut frame circa 1998...and loving it! I will try to periodically post my layouts and inspiration I find along the way. 

     SO grab your best scrappin pal and join us in our quest, challenging each other to find new inspiration in old scrappin supplies that you have stashed but not actually used in a very long time!