Credit card crafting

Usually for me the phrase "credit card crafting" means going to a craft store and buying whatever catches my eye to toss on the craft pile to use when inspiration strikes.  But this project uses actual credit cards!

I got the general idea from a picture I saw on pinterest a while back.  And now that my son has started preschool, I have a bunch of free time I have no clue what to do with.  Sure, I could be scrubbing floors or doing laundry, but those things suck.  I think I'd rather cut up a bunch of old credit and store cards that happened to be in coordinating tones and glue them to a mirror frame I fished out of a clearance bin.

Lately, our family has been in a bit of a money crunch, so this project felt oddly cathartic.  Nothing major, just a little good ol' amurikan living beyond our means and not watching the bottom line.  We're going to fix this.  And I know some of my spending was more about alleviating my depression than actually needing stuff.  Now that that's being treated, keeping to a budget doesn't bother me the way it used to.

So anyway, I've been hanging on to old cards for a while, looking for the perfect project.  This ikea clearance mirror seemed to be the perfect base to glue shit on, so I grabbed it.  I just chopped up six cards and mixed the little squares up at random, after picking out the logos and printing I wanted as details.

The little kinda apple shaped G comes from a Genuardi's store card.  Genuardi's was a local supermarket chain until a bigger supermarket chain bought them out and totally fucked shit up.  They went under earlier this year.  I miss their soups.

I get a ton of bullshit credit card come ons in the mail, and I'm always amused by the ones that go to the trouble to include a fake card with their pitch.  I especially love it when the fake cards say "YOUR NAME HERE".  The cheezier and faker, the better.  Although, Amex has some nice fake cards:

Looks almost like a real one, doesn't it?

I cut the best part out of one and cast it in resin.

I'm still thinking of how I want to finish this.  Pendant? Or riff on the classic I.D. bracelet?  I'm sure one of these days I'll figure it out.

Anyone else get creative with crap they'd otherwise throw out?