Waste not...

...Want not.

Although prices vary quite a bit for the different mica sprays that are now available, they are still quite expensive and the last thing you want to do is waste them un-necessarily.

At the beginning of December UKS held their "Scrappy Little Christmas" cybercrop and cybercrops always mean - MYSTERY KITS. A kit is made available at a reasonable price but the contents are a surprise (and the same for everyone). You can not discuss the contents with anyone...the aim being that you create something out of the contents that will earn your team points. You also have to stick to the contents of your kit although there are a few black or white items that you can supplement.

The kit this time contained a bottle of pearly mica spray - lovely but all the papers were quite highly patterned so out came the black CS.
As you can see, I created a box with a corsage-style embellie on the corner but rather than just spritz the black CS I used the chipboard snowflakes (part of kit) as masks. This also saved time and effort as I wanted to spray the chipboard shapes anyway LOL and had the benefit of not wasting the lovely mica spray.
For the challenge I used some of the PPs to make a mini album and a matching christmas bauble - both of which were decorated with the sprayed snowflakes.
The bauble was made from punched cutouts - I used a Woodware 3" six-petal flower punch. Each punched shape was then folded in half and glued together along the spine of the fold. I can't remember how many shapes I used but the number can be adjusted to give a fuller bauble.
The mini album was quite easy as one of the PPs was decorated in quarters (double sided too) so that formed the pages. The front of the album had a bit of bling added (kit) along with some decoupage cut from one of the other PPs.
The embellie was made using my poinsettia nestie to cut the shapes from one of the PPs and then forming them into 3D flowers (they were given a spritz and a bit of stickles added to the centres). I used Martha Stewart fir branch and x-cut holly sprig punchs to cut loads of shapes from white paper. Some of these I sprayed, some remained plain. It was then just a case of using some pinflair glue to assemble it all. I also cut a few bits of the ribbons provided to add into the arrangement.
As you can see from this pic - the black CS used for the box didn't spray evenly. Normally if I require an even finish I would gently wipe over with some kitchen towel but on this occasion the spritz & splatter added to the effect.

So if you are going to play with sprays and shapes don't just spray on newspaper or in a box - place some CS under your shapes and you will get a lovely 'masked' effect paper without wasting/using up any more of your lovely spray. Go on - have a play.....................