Shopping Our Stash #76

Hello friends!  It's Tuesday so that means its time for another challenge over at Shopping Our Stash.

This time around we want to see you use "Your Best Deal".  That means we want you to create something using one of you best bargain/had to have it - it was on sale! purchases (be sure to tell us what it is).

I have a great story to tell you about my best deal, but first let me show you what I made.

 I bought some images from iralamija shop over on etsy.  This one is called Shabby Christmas Tags.  The other images are just as beautiful and I can't wait to use them!  I made a tall skinny card this time.  My son was amazed that it wasn't a "normal" card!  lol  I triple matted the card and stamped some swirls along the edges.

 Here's a close up of the image.  I inked the edges of the tag and added a few pearls.

Here's the small embellishment I put together with my best deal.  See those gold berries?  And the jingle bells?  Get a comfy seat, here goes!  About 8 years ago, in February, my children and I were in Michaels looking around.  I came around a corner and an entire aisle was filled with Christmas florals all on clearance.  A couple of employees were loading up those huge black rolling carts they have.  They had a sign that caught my eye.  Fill a shopping basket for $1.....$1....$1?????  Um, excuse me miss??  $1?  That's right.  $1.  Soooooooo.....I can put 4 of these potted poinsettias in a basket for $1?  Yes ma'am, and actually if you part the flowers you can put 2 more in between.  ......2 more?  Yup.  Whatever you can fit in that basket you can get for $1.  oooookkkkk, well, there are these stems of poinsettias and berries....can I get another basket?  Oh, you don't need another basket.  Just tuck them in around the pots.  .....just tuck them in?  Yup!!  Load it up!  (Remember, it's February.  They want to get Christmas stuff out of there!)  all right.  My basket is really full.  May I fill another one??  Of course!  Fill as many as you want!  4 baskets piled in a shopping cart later, we walk out of Michaels with 8 large bags of Christmas florals for $4.  $4!  We had so much fun getting them in the house.  When my husband came home the living room was filled with Michaels' bags.  At the time we were living on a shoestring.  My only spending money was what my mom made for me when she took my crafts to work to sell to her coworkers.  I took everything out of the bags and added up the regular price on everything.  It came to almost $800!  NO LIE!!  There were some of the single stem flowers with glitter that were $7.99 each.  I had dozens of those!  I can't even remember everything anymore.  My house was decorated with poinsettias in every color for the next few Christmases!  Most of the flowers have moved on to other projects (my son has 6 pots next to his fireplace at Christmas.) but I still have a few small things left.  These gold berries and the jingles bells were part of the Mother-load I took home that day!  Oh, and speaking of my husband.....His eyes bout popped out of his head when he saw those bags.  He says he never really thought I was lying, but he just couldn't figure out the true story.  He was waiting for a receipt to "show up" eventually.  And of course, it never did!  I paid cash, $4, for my treasure!!  It was AMAZING!  I've never found such a sweet deal again, but I never will forget that one!

So, end of long story!  I hope you decide to play along with us this week.  I can't wait to hear your story!

That's about it.  Thanks for taking a peek!

Blessings & Hugs,

Michelle