Kitchen Sink Crew Challenge: Going Green

It's time for a brand new Kitchen Sink Crew Challenge, brought to us by Lynn. We hope you'll play along for a chance to win some fabulous prizes from Kitchen Sink Stamps (more about that later . . .).

Most of us are making an effort to be more responsible citizens by looking for opportunities to reduce, reuse, repurpose, and recycle. Lynn's challenged us to "go green" by taking some previously used non-stamping item that is headed for the trash can and turning it into a component in our Kitchen Sink projects, either as a layer or embellishment of some sort--kind of "Trash to Treasure," so to speak!

I stretched the challenge a little and used a sort-of stamping related item--an empty ribbon spool--to make an small keepsake box. I first saw this idea a while ago in the 3D Tuesday Challenge at Paper Craft Planet, but didn't have any empty spools to use then. The idea's been in the back of my mind ever since.

I used a craft knife to lift off one of the sides from the center of the empty ribbon spool. This left me with two pieces, a flat circle and a base with a wide circle bottom and a smaller circle shaped compartment, open on one end. I sanded down the rough edge of the small cardboard circle with a Basic Grey file, then cleaned it up with a quick coat of white acrylic paint. I put a small pink circle inside of it to cover the hole that went through the ribbon spool and wrapped a piece of grosgrain ribbon around the outside of the circle to pretty it up.

The round sides of the spool (now the top and bottom of my little keepsake box) are covered with a light pink scalloped cardstock circle. The top is covered with a smaller piece of sparkly patterned paper. I stamped the "dream" sentiment from the Vintage Words set on a label die cut, then added a pair of ribbons, tied with a piece of twine, as an embellishment.

If you'd like to play along with this challenge, you have until June 19 to link your project at the Kitchen Sink Stamps blog. There are three great prizes this month: 1st prize is the winner's choice of one large KSS set; 2nd prize is the winner's choice of one small KSS set; and 3rd prize is a bottle of Peony Dew Drops.

For more ideas using recycled goodies, you can visit the rest of the Kitchen Sink Crew. Here's where you can find them:

Angela Knopf
Connie McCotter
Dee Jackson (welcome back!)
Julie Masse
Lisa Somerville
Lynn McAuley
Makiko Jones
Maria Colosimo, owner
Tammy Hershberger

Materials Used:

Vintage Words stamp set (Kitchen Sink Stamps); Berry Sorbet Palette ink, Sweet Blush cardstock, Sweet Blush double stitched grosgrain ribbon, Berry Sorbet buttons, twine (Papertrey Ink); patterned paper (SEI-Mimosa line); circle, scalloped circle, and label dies (Nestabilities); acrylic paint