Same here. I bought a "Spring Fling" dollar stamp a long time ago, mostly because I liked the dotted circle frame around it. I cut out the sentiment so I could re-insert it, or just use the frame. With long sentiments, sometimes I cut them apart, sometimes I mask to rearrange.
Daniel's "Kit in an envelope" comes to mind regarding limited supplies. I enjoyed making something mostly from the supplies included in the kit.
Another way to get more from your stamps is with the reflection, or mirror image technique. You could get two bears for the price of one! I mostly think of the Stampin Up Lovely as a Tree set when I think of reflection stamping but I saw a cool way to reflect a sentiment today, in this older youtube
video.