In Stacy’s bag of inspiration were all sorts of unrelated items: some wire screen mesh, drink coasters, a metal and plastic candy tin, Rolodex cards, and small brown paper sacks.

So, which of these items do you think I’ll use? And what do you think I’ll do with them? Leave your thoughts in the comments below…

OK, I’ll admit it—this was sort of a setup. I’m good, but even I couldn’t make something significant from this pile of stuff. Stacy’s package provided inspiration for a previous article, so these items were sort of the leftovers, which I posted as a group intentionally so I could talk a little bit about the process of getting inspired by objects.

While these items as a group didn’t prompt me to create one big piece, they did give me several good nudges over the last couple of weeks. Here’s how:

I don’t eat any candy sweetened with sugar or aspartame, which means I don’t buy this product. I’ve always wanted to play with one of the tins, but it’s a drag to buy candy just to throw it away and save the container—not that I don’t do it regularly. I’ve never purchased one of these tins because I wasn’t sure if I could take it apart and discard the plastic portion. You all know how I feel about plastic, right? Bleh.

Armed with the tin from Stacy, and a pair of pliers, I finally got my answer. Yes, the plastic piece does pop out quite easily. Now I know firsthand, and can add this to the things I buy at the dollar store. The girls in my local group will be thrilled—they’re usually the recipients of the candy that’s been shucked from its container.

A lovely, round, metal container that’s shiny inside, and colored outside. What could be better? I have visions of little mermaid scenes already.

Let’s move on to the coasters. I’ve seen plenty of things made with these—book covers, tags, chunky book pages. I’ve tried using them myself, and found them a pitiful surface for most techniques. They’re coasters. They’re designed to suck up liquids. That means paint sinks into them and dries too quickly, glue stick doesn’t really keep things stuck to them, and they’re just generally miserable to beat into shape. Why torture myself turning these into something?

Instead, I’ll punch holes in these, and hang them on the wall with the rest of my templates—because they are great sizes and shapes for small projects. I can grab one of these and trace around it for perfect round pages, or squares with rounded corners.

Now, I know one or two of you put these two items together right way. So did I. The Rolodex cards fit perfectly into the little brown sacks. So, yes, I could have made something here—maybe a small book? Hmm, that sounds familiar….

…because I’ve already done a cute little paper bag book with cards in it. I posted it over in Decos and Small Books, in How-To Instructions, as an accordian spine book. It’s slightly larger, but still, it’s the same idea.

The second thing I thought is that I’ve been wanting to do some altered Rolodex cards. I’ve seen people swapping them—in fact, I posted some altered Rolos as Flickr Fun in the GMS blog recently. Here are some that have been posted recently:

Now, I totally love this idea, because people are always asking me what I do with altered art pieces. Altered Rolodex cards come with their answer inscribed on them—they’re really functional address cards for a Rolodex. They have a use, besides just being fun and pretty. How could I not want to swap these?

My first three Rolos, ready to swap. And there’s quite a long, ongoing swap of these running at ATCsForAll.com when I have the time to post them. Yay!

Perhaps I’ll do some nude Rolos in a plain brown wrapper—although I won’t be using the cards Stacy sent, since everyone seems to be swapping the larger, 3×5 cards. That also means I’ll have to make my own little bags from brown paper.

One last thing: the screen wire. This was sort of an obscure prompt—I’ve had a little shrine in the back of my head for over a year now. Just a tiny chair in a box, with no way out, called A Room of My Own. I have the chair, I have an assortment of boxes from which to choose, and I do have some screen for the front. This piece reminded me to drag all that back down onto my work table and do something about it. At some point, I’ll have a little shrine that looks something like this.

There you have it. An armload of inspiration for a variety of things, all from a pile of unrelated objects. Thanks, Stacy!