SOS371: upcycling

i love challenges where i get to re-use, re-cycle or up-cycle a non-crafty ingredient, especially when it's something i might actually have thrown away. more on that in a minute, but by now you'll have sussed the this week's challenge at shopping our stash is to perform such a feat, and here is the card i made:

upcycled plastic packaging as a shaker card window + flower images cut from an old falling apart book; mason jar stamp and die: art-c; patterned paper: k and co; crystal drops: little birdie; butterfly sticker: sticko; stamping ink: staz-on; ink for edges: ranger distress; glossy black cardstock: the paper cut; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, sookwang scor-tape 

yes, that's TWO shaker cards this year-- a new record for me, lol! but i recently found an entire tin of little crystal beads, which reminded me of the glass marbles used in flower arranging, and thus the idea for a vase/shaker emerged. luckily, i had the sturdy plastic box in which my colorburst inks and reinkers were packaged, so i had the perfect material to make a somewhat realistic mason jar:

I stamped the jar with staz-on, and used the coordinating die on my absolutely ancient k and co paper... which, by the way, i still really love! i've got a sort of secondary-line in upcycling on this card, too: instead of stamping or diecutting flowers, i chose a lovely vintage illustration from a falling-apart garage sale book, backed the slightly brittle paper with scraps of cardstock, and fussycut the flowers. i generally run just a tiny bit of distress ink around the edges at times like these, otherwise you get that glaring white of the cardstock backing. i mounted the blooms on a bit of foam tape for even more dimension, and this pretty butterfly sticker came and perched on the leaves!

don't forget to check out the glorious cards from the SOS design team for more inspiration!