Sunday 16 June 2013

Putting the Scrap Back into Scrapbooking

What do you do with your scraps?
I mainly use mine for cardmaking and that means I have a habit of saving even tiny scraps and eventually they get out of hand.

My scraps box was full to overflowing so last week, when P was out for the evening, I emptied and sorted all the pieces into 9 'kits'. They are not kits in the true sense as there are no embellishments or cardstock but the papers co-ordinate in colour/tone/style. I added in all my partial alpha sheets too, the ones with no vowels, thinking if they are together I'm more likely to use them for a mixed-font title or something.
A few weeks ago I shared a layout in which my background was entirely made of a patchwork of scraps. My blog friend Sian commented that there was a potential Blog Hop in there. Well, I'm not really confident about organising a full Blog Hop, but I'm happy to open this up for you play along.

For the rest of the summer (apart from a few themed layouts I already have started) I want to use these kits as much as possible. As I pull each one out, I'll add embellishments and ribbon, tape etc. I'm not going to make things difficult for myself and ban shopping for extras. It's just about using what I have. I'll make cards for my stash as I go along too so, hopefully, I won't have too much left.
The first I pulled out to tackle was this kit of dark reds, blues and greens in vaguely vintage tones.There were a couple of A4 sheets but the rest were little scraps. I went hunting for photos which would work with the colour scheme and found 2 of the fireplace in our French house.
I choose this sheet of green linen effect cardstock by DCWV for my background and then arranged the papers I had. The two strips of red were exactly that size straight from my scraps kit. I cut the doily paper into 3 pieces. I wasn't worried about the gap in the centre as I knew it would be covered by my matted photos.
The papers for the double mat were also in the kit, as were the doily and the alphas. The embellishments were cut from papers in the kits and I just added some stitching, buttons and washi tape. I wanted this to have a cosy, domestic feel and I think I've achieved that.
But I didn't stop there. I found this owl amongst the papers and I love owls. I have used an owl motif on all of my Harry Potter pages, so I went to my HP kit to see if I could use him there. I'd forgotten the B-side of one of the themed papers I bought from Scrap the Magic was 'Owl Post'. I added Glossy Accents to give him some strength and attached him over the printed owl on the paper.
Again, the papers for matting and the letters came from the scraps kit. The other embellishments are from my HP kit.
My last project from this kit was a quick card. All I have left is this:
I cut the remaining pieces into even blocks, through away anything smaller than 3x4 and put the remainder at the bottom of the green scraps file, from whence they originally came. I haven't blitzed the kit, but I've certainly reduced it in volume, and I enjoyed creating in this way.

If you would like to Put the Scrap Back into Scrapbooking and make a dent in your own pile of scraps, why don't you join me? Set aside an hour to sort your scraps into 'kits'. They can be themed by topic (Outdoor photos, vintage) or by colour. Make sure you keep the tones matching, unless you really like using bold and pastel colours together.

There are absolutely no rules for how you use the kits, but I'd love to see what you come up with so please link back to me in your posts and leave me a comment so I can pop over and visit. Happy Scrapping!

6 comments:

furrypig said...

brilliant idea Kirsty to actually use up the scraps and I will be trying to join you xxx

ps you should try and organise a blog thingy as I am sure loads of us would join you maybe it could be 'scrap' related!!

alexa said...

Lots of clever usage of the bits and pieces in here! I keep my scraps in colour themed plastic pockets in files, but use so little paper it is going to take me forever to use them up. Perhaps Ireally need to join you ...

Sian said...

I'm a huge scraps hoarder. I can't throw even the tiniest scrap away..call it a left over from my Blue Peter childhood!

I especially love your first page here which has a fun, pull it all together kind of feel to it

Alison said...

What a good idea, Kirsty...the thought of sorting out all those scraps terrifies me though!
Alison xx

Maria Ontiveros said...

What a great post and love the layouts.
Rinda

Anonymous said...

What a great idea and great layouts. I especially like that first one.