Dealing with Scraps

When I finish a card or a scrapbook page, I always have scraps left over. I tend to throw them into an Iris bin. The problem is that my one Iris bin of scraps has turned into multiple bins. It was just easier to start with a new sheet of card stock and patterned paper than to go to the bins of scraps and dig through them.

I ended up cutting the card stock scraps into photo mats that are 4.25x6.25, card fronts that fit a 4.25x5.5 card, and card fronts that fit the same sized card but with a slight margin of the card exposed. I organized them by color. The scraps that were smaller were also organized by color and fit into quart sized bags. They can be used for die cuts for card making or scrapbooking.

I had a 5 inch tall stack of photo mats, and about the same sized stack of card fronts. However, some of those photo mats and card fronts were cut prior to our move. I added them all together. Hopefully now I will actually go to those first.

I still have to deal with the patterned paper scraps.

It should be a lot easier to use my scraps now. I hope it will speed up both card making and scrapbooking.

Here is a card that I made entirely from my scraps, except for the card base:

It was made prior to my cutting and organizing my scraps, and it was hard to find papers and card stock that went well together. I had pulled together several card kits two or three months ago from my scraps, but I had pulled the easiest and most obvious. Finding papers and card stock that coordinated was much harder after that, which surprised me. That more recent exercise in using leftovers is what actually gave me the incentive to finally deal with my scraps to make them easier to use. There is enough good material among them that I just can't bring myself to toss the scraps. Having seen how many card bases and photo mats I now have, I am glad that I didn't just through all the scraps away.