Shopping Our Stash: Greeting Cards Recycled as Page Elements

I love making friends from around the world.  I have crafting/blogging pals from many countries; I've been involved with various exchange student programs; and I've had international pen pals since I was a teenager.  Every December I enjoy receiving Christmas/holiday cards from my pen pals, and I'm always looking for ways to document these tokens of international friendship.

I recently discovered a weekly challenge site called "Shopping Our Stash."  It is all about using what you have on hand instead of buying more and more craft supplies.  Stash reduction is an eco-friendly concept that's right up my alley.  This week I'm playing along with "Shopping Our Stash" for the first time, taking their challenge to recycle a greeting card.  In fact, I'm using three greeting cards on a scrapbook page.  It's a photo-less page; I'm letting my pen pals' sweet holiday greetings speak for themselves. 

Supplies: green striped papers (Reminisce), notebook patterned paper with barcode "postmark" (Making Memories), snowflake alphabet stickers (Reminisce), mini alpha-numeric stickers (Authentique),  Earth sticker (Reminisce), label stickers (October Afternoon), pen (Zig).

Besides the greeting cards, I also included some other recycled page elements: bits of used wrapping paper and used postage stamps.  The postage stamps are not the ones that came with the cards--I just used any stamps that I thought would look pretty on the page.  I also finally used part of a sheet of Making Memories paper that I'd had in my stash for a couple of years, so I'm quite pleased with this exercise in "stash reduction."

Here are a few detail shots...

 cluster at the top of the page: 

wrapping paper scraps and used postage stamps

 another postage stamp cluster...heavy on the cuteness factor :)

still more postage stamps, 

plus my subtitle on the Planet Earth sticker

I am also entering this scrapbook page in the current Scrap for Help challenge.  For the month of December, Scrap for Help is challenging participants to create Christmas projects that incorporate recycled materials.  So, this page fits perfectly with the Scrap for Help challenge as well. 

I had a lot of fun playing along with these challenges, and I look forward to participating more with "Shopping Our Stash" and "Scrap for Help" in the future.