Use it up, wear it out

I’m an awful hoarder. By which I mean I’m brilliant at it, especially craft things. I acquire ‘stuff’ that is far too good to use straight away & must make its way into deep storage until the right project never comes along.

But I’ve been earnestly watching lots of Marie Kondo during Lockdown & trying to adopt some of her philosophy of letting go of ‘stuff’ if I’ve not used it within a certain time. And today, I used some stuff up barely an hour after creating it!

I tend not to clean my craft mats (or anywhere) as often as I should, & because the layers of dried on paint were starting to make them unusable, I took some sticky tape & lifted it off, like I’ve seen done to clean up gelli plates. I got some unexpectedly lovely results. It seemed a shame to bin them, & I found myself packing the tapes away for some future project that I simultaneously knew would never happen. 

So I unpacked them straight away, found a background I’d been working on, and started layering the tapes over.

I layered over the top with some stamping & mark making, & then a layer of matt medium, to take the shine off the tape.

I was pleased with the overall look, and it was easy, quick & mindless to achieve. And most importantly a bit less stuff hanging around!