Thrifty Thursday: Start With A Collection You Love

One of my all-time favorite paper collections ever was Cosmo Cricket's The Boyfriend line:

Normally I would link to the paper on the company's website, but they only show a couple of pieces since it's an older line. Lucky for you, I found this image online that shows the whole collection!

The Boyfriend included a fun mix of school-themed papers and embellishments along with lots of funky icons related to music, video games, etc. and also had some basic striped, grid, and lined papers. Basically, The Boyfriend fit my description of a perfect paper line: bright colors + basic patterns + whimsical designs + paper you can journal on (are you listening, manufacturers? :)). I love lines like this because you can use them in so many different ways.

One of the benefits of being a very simple scrapper is that even when I've used a collection on many layouts and cards I have a lot left over. I go through my papers and purge things once or twice a year, but some products I just can't give away. But...do I ever go back and use them? Rarely.

(Note for those non-scrapbookers reading this: there is huge product turnover in the papercrafting industry. There are two major trade shows a year, one in January and one in July. Most manufacturers produce 2-4 new lines per show and in the last couple of years there's also been a trend to have a "mid-release" line or two that come out between shows. Product is considered old by the time the next trade show rolls around, and ancient after a year.)

So...enter this whole Thrifty Thursday concept. Every Thursday I'm going to attack my stash of older products from a different viewpoint (until I run out of viewpoints, and then I'll run through them again with more things from my stash :)). This week I started with a collection I loved: The Boyfriend (shh...don't tell my husband about The Boyfriend...).

I pulled out the papers and thought about what to scrap. I decided that this line would be a perfect starting place for a photo-less layout about our recent visit to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. From there I went crazy. Here's the layout:

Cardstock (Bazzill Basics) + Patterned Paper (Cosmo Cricket, American Crafts) + Stickers (Lily Bee, Sassafrass, American Crafts, Creative Imaginations) + Font (Dance Floor Exit)

Here's my process.


1. I downloaded a fun dingbat font from dafont called Dance Floor Exit. I used my Cameo to cut out five dancing figures and layered them with pop dots on the yellow tone-on-tone audiotape patterned paper from The Boyfriend. I also added a strip of striped paper and a handcut boom box and speech bubble from the same collection. I added some more recent Lily Bee alpha stickers to the speech bubble.


2. Next, I went digging through all of my old Thickers for a set that would work and chose the Dolce font in Apricot.


3. After adding some of the tickets from our visit and the handcut pieces from The Boyfriend, I though I needed some more embellishments and started digging through my stash. The old star sticker from Sassafrass surfaced, as did the "so cool" epoxy sticker from Creative Imaginations.


4. The star looked like it wanted company, so I tried to remember whether I had any older star paper and came up with this bit from American Crafts.


I started with an older collection I love, and ended up digging into products from five different manufacturers (six if you count the cardstock). I created a layout I love that doesn't look dated to me even though I used some old and some ancient products.

So...if this idea appeals to you and you want to play along, start with an older collection you love and go from there. In fact, if you are playing along, comment here and tell me what older collection you love (hey, I could use some more inspiration!), and then, if you do create something, come back here and link me up in the comments.

By the way, when Sadie saw The Boyfriend she loved him, too. (I wasn't expecting that for another decade or so.) She started to make her own layout about the Grammy Museum but isn't done yet. I'll post it on my blog once she's done.