Premade Bliss!

I love creating. I love making. But I also love premade. I would even venture to say buying some things premade saves a little money. For instance, the flower I used below came from a set by K&Company. This is a three-piece paper flower complete with a cordoroy brad. I'm sure the pack of six flowers cost me around $4, but -trust me- those jars of flowers are $7-8 and textured brads...you're talking $3-4 for a 10-pack. Money is definately not the main reason I buy premade though. I love using embellishments like this as a starting point - for color or texture inspiration. On the page below I started with the paper butterfly and worked backwards to find papers and other accents to match. It was just the inspiration I needed!

Every now and again I would like to feature products on my blog that people buy but never use. Maybe it's because you're not sure how. Or maybe it's because you need an example to follow. Well, here it is. Feature #1 for "Usual product, Unusually used". I love cardstock photo frames. Shimmery, textured, patterned...all of them. But I've personally always found it difficult to use them for the typical purpose - framing photos. So here I used them as accents. Really, they are the perfect way to showcase other aspects of your page too - papers, accents, titles.

"Bunny Ears" - by Laura Leland - 04/25/09

Supplies:

Paper - (white cardstock) American Crafts; (brown cs) Worldwin; (green cs) Close to My Heart; (green floral & brown dot) Chatterbox; (textured pink-peach) Basic Grey;

Accents - (photo frames) My Minds Eye; (brads-plain) Imaginsce; (bunny brad) Doodlebug; (flower) K&Co; (chipboard swirl & "e") Bo Bunny; (ribbon) American Crafts; (paper butterfly) Prima

Tools - (scallop circle diecut) Spellbinders; (swirl embossing folder) Cuttlebug; (Date and Title diecuts) Lyrical Letters - Cricut; (scallop border punch) EK Success