Sweetie Pie, Oh So Sweet--Frugal Friday with Prima

So I took upon a challenge to create for the Prima Frugal Friday post. Its not that I shy away from frugal. On the contrary, I wish I would spend less money on a layout. However I have a small addiction to Prima flowers and I believe I share this addiction with many friends on bloggy land!!

So when I signed up for frugal friday, I was sure I wouldn't be able to spend $5 dollars or less unless I made a card or a tag. However I took the challenge seriously and miraculously not only did I spend less than $5 dollars, I also wrote down some tips on how to be more frugal when creating layouts.

This is my layout using the Anna Marie collection. I've added a step by step tutorial so you can see I was truly frugal. I can't believe it myself as this layout looks more expensive than it is. LOL!!

Here are some close-ups and below are the products and their cost.

Supplies:

846336- Anna Marie Collection: Calico

846305- Anna Marie Collection: Anna Marie

846329- Anna Marie Collection: Sewing basket

846299- Anna Marie Collection: Eloise

570033- Anna Marie Collection: Chipboard

563035- Anna Marie Collection: tickets

569921- Wood Icons: Birds and Butterflies

563882- Wood Icons: Leaves and flowers

571528- Le Mia- cotton candy flowers

562984- Sunrise Sunset Canvas Alphabet stickers

960445- Finnabair mask

other products: Golden Light Molding paste, cheese cloth

Cost

1 Sheet of Anna Marie Calico paper= $ 0.80

Scraps of paper from the Anna Marie Collection= $ 0.70 (includes Calico, Anna Marie, Eloise and Sewing basket)

1 Anna Marie ticket= $ 0.10

Chipboard title from Anna Marie collection= $ 0.30

2 Sunrise Sunset Letters= $ 0.02

8 Wood Icons= $1.33

6 Le Mia flowers= $ 1.67

for a total of: $4.92

Frugal Tips:

(How to make a layout look expensive yet be frugal in cost)

1. Save your scraps. As you can see, I used lots of scraps from the Anna Marie Collection to build this layout.

2. Buy reusable items like masks and stamps. I used the circled mask here to create an interesting background.

3. Fussy cut elements from your pages to use as layers on your layouts. I fussy cut some flowers and frames to create more layers and volume on this layout.

4. Buy products that contain numerous items like the wood icons or small flowers, that way you can use them over and over again. I used my wood icons and flowers here and I still have so many to spare for another project.

5. Use your packaging. I often use my Prima packaging to create layers in my layout.

6. Create lots of layers on your project. Use foam tape to raise your layers to create depth.

Well, that's all for today!! thanks for coming and visiting me on my blog as I conquer the Frugal challenge!!

Are you up for the challenge?

Have a wonderful day!!