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I don't know whether my ancient ancestor was that one caveman who fanatically ran around trying to find a use for that last bit of mammoth pelvis or what, but I seem to be possessed with an obsessive desire to use all the supplied bits in my 40k kits. I love to see carefully built, unique custom models hit the board as well as the satisfaction of being able to field expensive units cheaply by using extra parts from another box. For instance, my orks consist of:

over half discount-bout black reach boyz converted to be Lootas, Burnas, and Tankbustas (all from the same loota box) remodeled with shootas (Easily custom-assembled from extra guard and SW bits, and leaving the choppas for more dynamic poses) and BR nobs with plasticard Mega-armor, built from my favorite tutorial in the modeling section. My Big Gunz are made from extra Battlewagon turrets and guard heavy weapons, my grot tanks/warbuggies are scratchbuilt and one is magnetized to become scratchbuilt wazdakka. I've got a SM Dreadnought magnetized to become a looted deff dread, and ditto with looted rhinos.

What do other people do with their extras to make their armies cheap/memorable? I'm attempting necrons now, and looking for tips on how to use some of these pretty extra pieces.

Honestly I tend to use them as basing material if they're useless bits, but I tend to save them to make characters stand out.

I store them in Bead Boxes until I come up with a use for them or trade them to a friend.

They can also make good basing materials for Dreadnoughts and such.

You can invest in some of these boxes for just a few dollars at a local Arts and Craft Store (Hobby Lobby, Michael, and so on):

I love using the excess sprues, with using Orks it's almost mandatory to put pieces from other stuff on your vehicles and give guys extra helmets and knives and stuff. I also use spare parts for terrain (such as marine/guard heads on spikes) and for objectives. Weapons work good as objectives, I'll put a couple guns in a pile on a spare unit base, and use it as a weapon cache.

You can never have enough bitzs

Hell I even buy bags of bitz from shops/online sometimes. Always need some more for nifty conversion ideas

I basically don't use mine unless I'm magnetising. I know people say 'keep all those spare Gaunt arms, you never know when you'll use them! But unless I'm some day going to make a Critters-esque ball of Devourers that rolls around shooting everything near it, those spare Gaunt arms aren't going to do anything.

Put em in a box, when/if I need them, I get them. Today I made a Dark Apostle using a Dark Vengeance Chosen, a Dark Angels book I've had lying around since I started playing in 4th edition, some Chaos bits I've had lying around, and some crafty conversion work:

And with that, I didn't have to spend $20 on a new GW one. Having a deep bits box is awesome.

Sell 'em on ebay. People snatch them up fast.

I love the Chaos boxes for this, as when I buy regular old marine boxes I can mix it up a bit with a few different weapons/heads/whatever, and quite a few of my Champions have leftover bits from the Possessed box for arms. Then there's my Obliterators, which are some termies I have attached every spare special and heavy weapon I could find to.

Extra power weapons come in handy with my guard too, although some of them have swords bigger than they are.

I like the dark apostle. Great work! By the way, not using all the bitz in the box just means more for later, and if you're assembling a big army at once, you can just save them for another squad, and if not, use them on the original.

As most others have already said, generally use them for random things, bases for vehicles, random conversions etc. Though I do have to say the number of spare bolters I have is just plain ridiculous.

Depends. Cadians come with almost no cool bits, so I tend to use all their gear. Catachans come with a stupid amount of cool bitz, so a couple of catachan boxes will end up outfitting an entire cadian platoon for me. Add in a massive bag of Ig bitz a friend sold me and the fact that the local store sells bitz, and that I have something crazy like 9 vehicle upgrade sprues, means that i have an insane Amount of IG bits.

And with orks, a single box of boyz can give you enough bitz for 20 to get blinged out and soup up a vehicle. The nobz box has so many bitz I'm STILL working on it. I look forward to buying more ork kits. They're the only ones I actually dont mind buying brand new, just because of how insanely customizable/how many bits they have.

One word: Orks

I used the extra bits from the many Immolator/Rhino sprues I have to make my HQ transports really bling.

In the grim darkness of the future, you can never bolt enough purity seals/skulls/holy icons on your transport.

Sometimes I make a weapon out of the sprues (ex. brother, who plays tau had a spare missile pod and some pulse rifles and some other bits, I made him a heavy rail rifle for his custom character). Sometimes I make a big hideous blob and I call it Chaos Spawn. With the Doomsday Ark, I made 10 Wraiths with the ghost ark bits.

As for the sprues themselves, I'm making some arm mounted rail gun for my bro's tau army so he can field broadsides.

Sacrifice to the Dice gods.

I made a lord commisar count as with a necron body, legs, and arms, a tau target lock for a head, cut the right arm to the little solid bit before the fist, glued a chainsword there, and gave the other arm a sm combat knife. I added a couple of purity seals to show that it is approved by the ministorum.