Money-saving experiments

Looking at my craft collection and how it has grown in the last few years makes me wonder: how much stuff can a person buy and still not have enough?! There's always a stamp that you love in the store, or another color of distress ink that would fit just perfectly with all the other colors of ink that you already have...
I think everyone who's into cardmaking or scrapbooking knows all too well that it can be an expensive hobby if you don't restrict yourself once in a while.

That is why I try to make the most of my supplies, and that sometimes calls for a little creativity (but that's what this is all about, isn't it? :p)

I've been following this years edition of Tim Holtz' 12 tag of christmas and couldn't help trying some of his techniques myself.

On day 3, he made a beautiful flower out of tissue tape. Because I didn't know where to find the tissue tape here in Belgian stores (and I didn't want to spend money to be honest),  I decided to try to make the flower my own way.

I took the most inexpensive, old paper that I had lying around, stamped it with the friends definition stamp and cut out a spiral.

Adhered it to a punched circle and sprayed with a little pearlized water.

And this is the result:

Doesn't look cheap at all, does it?! :)

Here's a view of the whole card...

 

And so I've learned that you don't have to spend too much money to create beautiful birthdaycards.

My next experiment: seeing how long it takes me to forget all about the lesson I've learned...! ;)

Ooh, the joy of being a crafter... :)