Jingle Belles Rock - Week 17 - Recycle!

Here we are again with another Jingle Belles Rock challenge. This week we were asked to re-use, re-purpose, re-cycle or up-cycle something for our card in honor of Earth Day.

Okay, I must tell you I am not good at this. I see all these people who take scraps of a brown paper bag and make something AMAZING out of it, but me? Meh. I'll recycle the bags, or return with them for my next shopping trip and re-use them, but I have very rarely ever used packaging or anything not specifically made for a card to make mine. I KNOW it's efficient and not wasteful and ... ... what can I say? I don't do it.

So last night I was chatting with some of my tweeps to get a clue, and finally came up with a really crazy (CAH-RAZY) idea that you'll see here in a second. First, My card:

I think it still needs something else, so I reserve the right for a re-do. That said, let's examine the parts-is-parts, shall we?

Check out these scallops:

See that white scallop layer? It's cut from a discarded SOCK! A SOCK, PEOPLE! I had just tossed it yesterday since it had a gaping hole in the heel, and I have a bazillion pairs of white socks, so it became trash. I pulled it out, cut across the sock from the hole in the heel, and cut out the straight section, leaving this:

Yes, it's clean. No, it's not white any more. It's 15 years old. Gimme a break. ANYway, that cross-section was sliced up the side and placed on my Big Shot with a border die:

Ta-da:

I went back and cut a scallop instead of that pointy one so more of the sock would show. Let's look at the center section of the card now:


The two other scallop layers are Wild Wasabi and Brushed Gold that I ran through the Big Shot with the Square Lattice embossing folder. And those green letters? From my stash, and at least 2 years old. I colored them with one of these that I picked up today:

Acrylic paint markers. I'd heard of their existence, but never owned any, until today. I used the green one to color the wood letters.

Now, for my next trick, I also used a "left-over" item on the card base. See the textured background here:


I painted some white card stock with tan, then green Claudine Hellmuth Studio paint. Then while it was still wet, I pressed a paper towel into it to create the texture. How does this count as re-use/re-cycle? Back in January, when I was packing up stuff from my Dad's house, I had brought a roll of paper towels to wrap and protect some of the smaller stuff. When I un-packed the box at home, I ended up with a pile of used paper towels. I have them stacked up in my kitchen, and I use them for cleaning or whatever. So I used one on the card to create texture. It totally counts. :) Think of it as packing material and you'll do fine.

So that's it - my card for this week's Jingle Belles challenge:

Wanna play? Find something to re-use/re-cycle, use it on a card, and join us! This is week 17, so I now have over 20 Christmas cards made already for this year. (Some weeks I made more than 1.) How many have YOU made? :)

Thanks for stopping by!