Welcome back to the craft room and today’s Use What You Have – Paper Scraps post. The other day I was once again cleaning up my craft space. This time I dug down deep enough into the pile to find two 12” x 2” Graphic 45 paper scraps. These pretty pieces of pattern paper have been down there since I made the Notepad Holders back in December! Throwing them away was not an option so I decided to use what I have to create some simple cards. Let me show you what I did.
Paper Scraps
Anyone who works with pattern paper has the same problem, what do I do with these pretty scraps of paper. If they are small enough, they just go in the trash. However in my opinion , a 12” x 2” scrap is just too large to toss. As you can see in the image below, the paper is beautiful.
I wanted to keep the cards fairly simple since I only had a limited amount of paper to work with. Cutting each strip down to 2 pieces that measured 5 1/2” x 2” would yield 4 total cards. With the left over inch of paper I cut them down to approximately 1/2” to decorate the inside of the finished cards. The next task was to find some matching card stock to mat each piece.
About a month ago I found this partial pad of Cason card stock at my local GoodWill store. I loved the color palette and the price at $1.99 was more than right! I used two of the colors as mats and I think they allow the colors of the pattern paper to really pop.
The next step was finding ink colors and sentiments to fit the space left of the card bases. I haven’t used my Memento Inks in a long time. After a quick look I found a few options for each pattern. Of course I always ask my boys for their opinions and we all settled on Tangelo, and Sweet Plum. For the sentiments I turned to Heartfelt Creations Special Birthday Sentiments set and the Card Phrases set by Stampabilitis and The Paper Studio. Of course whenever I stamp a sentiment I reach for my Mini Misty from My Sweet Petunia and Hero Arts.
The Finished Cards
Here are the cards that I created with these pretty paper scraps. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to use the same paper for each type of card, but in the end I created a Birthday and Thinking of You card with each scrap.
I am really enjoying using smaller scraps to decorate the insides of cards lately. It really adds a certain touch of elegance. For these cards I used a small 1/2” piece of the card stock used to mat the cards along with the small pattern paper scraps. The scraps were added either on the upper right hand side vertically, or horizontally on the upper left hand side.
Thank you so much for joining me today! I couldn’t be happier with how these four cards turned out. Even better, my craft desk is just a tad bit cleaner with these scraps off of it. Now to continue cleaning to see if there are any other items I can put to good use in the near future!
Have a wonderful week everyone and I will see you in back in the craft room again real soon!
PIN THIS POST FOR LATER!
