Scrap your scraps: Scrap to Your Hearts Content - Using Your Scraps to Make a Cute Background!

So here is my first blog post as a creative member of the Scrap your Scraps team, hope you enjoy!

For my first layout here I decided to tackle using some of my scraps to design a fun background. I have a tiny heart punch that I rarely use, so I thought I would give a try at making a ton of tiny hearts to spread out over my white cardstock.

After choosing several scraps of paper that I felt went together nicely I began punching multiple hearts from each. For this project I choose smaller scraps of paper since I so rarely use up those tiny ones. Even just strips of leftover paper work well for this too, and of course, any other shape would be awesome! I used several scraps from 6x6 paper pads, which are great since the patterns for those are sized down.

So my original idea when starting this layout was to lay out all my hearts in a grid pattern almost creating a patterned paper. I really do like this effect, and I toyed with removing hearts from the pattern in various places, just for another subtle effect. I really do like this, but as I was laying it out I kept glancing over at my left over strips of paper with the negative heart cutouts in them. I was really digging the look of them, and I also wanted to do some watercoloring on the background too, so I thought about how to combine them.

Here is where I had some lovely trial and error! First, did you know that Heidi Swapp Color Shine mist does NOT mix with water? Well I didn't, but after I attempted it for the background I found out. I really wanted a watercolour effect for this, but of course, my watercolours were no where to be found! After searching my tiny (extremely messy) scrap room with no luck I gave up and just misted some peach mist on the cardstock. I was digging this look, so I started laying out my strips of paper. My hearts are in no way evenly spaced, and some papers are longer/shorter or wider than others, but that's the point right? So after I laid these out I stapled them down with my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher. I left lots of space between staples so I could pull them up and bend them so they looked more crinkly. I also outlined each heart punch out with a black pen, just to have them stand out more. I then decided I still wanted to use up some of my heart shapes too, so after outlining them in black I glued them beside my strips of paper.

And now for the final product, since I forgot to take any more photos!

I love love LOVED making this layout! I had so much fun creating this, and it was very enjoyable to start a project with at least somewhat of an idea of what I wanted for a finished project. I hope I've inspired you to dig out your scraps and your punches and go to town!

Cathy Martin

Creative Team Member of SCRAP YOUR SCRAPS

I was very inspired by Cat's layout. I love creating layouts with the bits and scraps of paper I have left over from previous projects. If there is a line of papers I fall in love with I want to make sure that I use every little bit of them up and it's usually the layouts that I feel happy and content about when finished. I thought I would share this layout in which I have only used scraps.

Thanks for stopping by and HAPPY SCRAPPIN'!

Mandy Reedyk
Creative Team Member of SCRAP YOUR SCRAPS

I was working on this layout and wanted to work some circles into it because of the polka dot background. So I punched some 1" circles to use, which left this piece of paper with the negative circles punched. I thought, hmmm, that reminds me of Cat's idea which she used for her post with the hearts. So I worked it into the layout and really like how it turned out. I wonder how many times we've thrown away these pieces of paper because we thought we were finished with them and didn't realize what a great addition they could make to our layouts. Here's the layout I made. I even tucked a little journal tag behind the picture to pull out.

I love how Cat worked the hearts and the negative pieces of paper into her layout and definitely want to try her method again using more of the negative space pieces. Thanks for the inspiration, Cat!