Circle Challenge: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This month's Circle Challenge was to create a project and reuse, recycle, or repurpose 3 items, and include at least 2 Cricut cuts. I decided to think outside the box.... or, more accurately... think of my own box purse! I have been saving my old Cricut mats for years now, and finally figured out something to do with them. I used two old mats to cut the base for my purse (roughly 10"long, 3.5"wide, 7.5"deep) and attached using packaging tape.

After taping, I used my MS scoreboard to score folds before gluing the paper onto the mats. 

 Coming along...

After I did the outside, I put paper on the inside, as well. K&Co. had some cute light green paper (12.24) I was able to use so that the bottom didn't have edges... they were just folds. 

The next reused item was the ribbon I trimmed the purse with and used as a handle. When my Sophie had pups, they began wandering very early, and I desperately needed something to tie them up with, since they were too small for collars/leashes. I was able to make little collars and leashes using my beloved ribbon. You can't even tell it spent 4 weeks tied to my porch with a little munchkin on the end, can you?!? :-D 

 I used grommets to reinforce the handles, and then on the back I made a real pocket, just for fun. 

My third reused item (if you don't count the paper stack I have recycled many times for various projects, and the fact that I used scrap paper for all of the solids except flowers/sun) are a few of the Cricut cuts. The red scallop came from something else, and I noticed it only after cutting out one from patterned paper, thinking it looked too flashy. I can't remember what project I had originally used the red scallop for, but it fit perfect, I think, behind the tree. It actually fit even more perfect than the circle I cut out but didn't like! And the fence was leftover from the bulldog house I made for my school. It definitely looks better on here than it did there! I was able to trim off the parts I had ripped off the doghouse, and ink it and add nails as necessary. The birdies also covered up accident-spots. 

I used Straight from the Nest for the birds 3.5" and the tree at 5" (except for Sentimentals, for the red back part... I have no idea what I had cut that out at originally), and Paper Doll Dress Up for the picket fence. In order to color match, I used my Imagine to print and cut the flowers and sun from Give a Hoot (I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually forgot that I had received it for Christmas until I was letting my little sister borrow my craft room for an FCCLA project yesterday!) A cute face was the perfect stamp on the sun, which of course I got from Peachy Keen stamps.  I cut the owl in the tree from the paper stack. Here are a few more pictures... hopefully at least one of them will do it justice!

And of course I stamped the bottom to prove that I really did make it! I love the wood pattern!