Kits and creativity

Over the years I've subscribed to several papercrafting and scrapbooking kits; I find them really helpful in providing new ideas and a starting block for a new project, with colour and theme co-ordinated products.  In the early days, I'd stick almost entirely to the kit contents, but gradually I got more adventurous and started adding items from my own stash and mixing and matching between kits.

I produced two layouts yesterday, both from old kits (I'm a real hoarder and hold on to the remnants of old kits for ages).  This first one is from parts of two kits, both from a company no longer selling kits (sadly).  The first photo shows how I assembled some items I liked the look of.  

A while ago, the finished page would probably have looked much like this, but now I have become more adventurous, I decided I wanted some more texture, colour and interest.  After some distressing, inking, stamping and stencilling, it looked like this ...

It's still a fairly simple page, but more interesting than the previous one.

At the moment I am receiving bi-monthly Quirky Kits. Whilst waiting for the current one to arrive, I explored my old kits and found a scrap of patterned paper that was ideal for the photo I wanted to scrap.  Initially I was planning to use plain white card as a background, as I like the effect of white space when you're using bright colours, but then I decided to have a play with some paints and inks, so it ended up looking like this ...

The white background card was dry brushed with two different paint colours before being stencilled and stamped using distress inks.  I also added a little stamping to the original patterned paper.  I added in a few embellishments (all from previous Quirky Kits), and was very happy with the outcome.