Welcome to Write. Click. Scrapbook! This is Amy Sorensen, and today and tomorrow I’m going to be looking at using (really, really using!) a single piece of patterned paper.
I save my bigger scraps of patterned paper with the goal of using them again, one day, somehow. Unlike all of my other supplies, I don’t store my scraps with any sort of organization—I just toss them into the scrap basket. And sometimes I do dig through it and use some scraps. But I also sort of tend to forget what’s in there.
So I set myself a goal to pick one piece of patterned paper and then see how far I could stretch it. How many layouts could I make with just one sheet, without putting anything back into my scrap basket?
In keeping with our monthly theme of using up our stuff, I dug around in my “multi-colored paper” drawer until I found this sheet:
It’s from My Mind’s Eye and is called Classic. (I grabbed the image from scrapbook.com because I spaced taking a picture of it before I started cutting.) I chose it because I thought it would work for both boy and girl layouts, I liked the warm shades, and a good, diagonal stripe is just so, well…classic. (Well done on the naming front, My Mind’s Eye!) Plus, I thought the B side might prove to be useful (I didn't actually end up ever using the B side, but it did influence my choice.)
For my first layout, I backed the negative title shapes with some of the paper, then cut randomly-sized squares and rectangles as accents. Then I had a little bit of fun with some gold paint. I also added some extra (gold) lines and a few polka dots with a pen. I tried to lay out the squares so that the stripes almost matched up, but not quite:
I suppose I could’ve cut the title words themselves out of the striped paper, but I use the negative like this quite often. It makes a different sort of shadow that I like!
I still had a good-sized chunk left, so next I started on a double-page spread. The paper’s warm hues felt a little bit autumnal to me, so I paired it with some photos of an early-fall hike we took a few years ago. I used my Silhouette out for this layout, too:
This time, I totally intended for the stripes to match up, in that patch of arrows. They didn’t, in the end, but that’s OK. The layout’s background is white cardstock painted with green Mister Huey’s mist. I like the texture of this quite a bit! And, again trying to use up supplies, I dug out an old-ish sheet of Bella Blvd alphabet stickers for the title. (I still have quite a few of these left. Maybe I’ll do a “stretch an alphabet sticker sheet as far as possible” challenge next!)
I liked the left-over scrap with the arrows cut out of it, so I used as a mask to make this card:
Maybe I didn't exactly "use" that scrap, in the sense that it's not on the card. But at least it got a second use before being sent to the recycle bin.
The pieces I had left were all fairly odd-shaped, so I decided to change the feel of the paper pretty thoroughly: I cut some of the scraps into strips, but I straigtened them out, with the lines of the stripes running straight instead of diagonal. Then I cut the scraps with only the green/brown/yellow hues. Can you spot the four places I used the paper in on this layout?
I had so much fun making this layout! I used scraps and pieces & parts from a bunch of different sticker sheets, just trying to unify everything by how the disparate elements “felt” to me. (Incidentally, I also used up the very last bits of the yellow daisy scrap I used from this layout!)
When I was done, I had these scraps left:
They felt small enough for me to sweep into my recycle bin without feeling much guilt. (Except the selvage...I kept that.) Three layouts and a card is a good use of one piece of patterned paper I think!
So, here’s a challenge to you: Pick a piece of patterned paper you’ve had sitting around for a while, and then use it! See how many layouts you can stretch it across. I’m certain that three is nowhere near the limit of possibilities!
Tune in tomorrow for a different way of using up an entire sheet of patterned paper. Happy scrapping!
