tips to make kits last, and stash shopping!!

As I've mentioned before we have been majorly skint lately. However we received a very welcome £300 payback from Npower. :) Most of it went onto bills but Mark insisted I spend a bit on myself as I didn't get much on my birthday. By a coincidence Craft superstore was selling some Martha Stewart bits on a good deal so I ordered those. :) I got two punch around the page sets, a circle cutter, some fringe scissors (which I'm not sure about) and a big pack of cardstock for just under £60. Bargain!

Anyway back to being skint. lol. Because of this I've been a bit more frugal with my kits and using bits I'd otherwise throw away. I've seen other frugal people do this before but I've never been bothered to. lol.
Anyway, things I've done:
1 - Use packaging. You can always rip up the pizza box and paint it or ink it. But here I've used the backing paper from the rub ons that came with the kit to mat my photo. Prima packaging is particularly great to use as its so pretty!

2 - Divide up a large embellishment. Now I admit I'd never have thought of this myself, seems sacrilege! lol. But I saw Rachael Elliot had taken this flower, which originally had pink and red layers, and made two flowers, one pink one red. They both still look striking as it was a big flower to start with, and now I have two :)

3 - Use sticker edges. There were two layouts I wanted to scraplift and both used the large cloud sticker which came with the kit. So I used the sticker on one, then used the edging to cut out some blue paper to make a second. i actually prefer this one as the edging makes it stand out. lol

4 - Make your own embellishments. In this months kit there were a set of little flags. Really sweet and SO simple to make with a toothpick and a bit of patterned paper. This wasn't my best attempt, was about 2 am when I did this one. lol

So I've actually decided I like being frugal. :) Also like stash shopping. lol. hopefully will be doing more of both in the future!