What do you do with your paper scraps?

This time of year, when the new catalog comes, I look through my piles and see what kits I haven’t finished – or started.  I begin the process of gathering up the papers and scraps I might have saved over the year.  Sometimes I have kept the scraps with the pages that I haven’t used yet.  

I am working on albums for Christmas present and have started putting photos in.  I find that I have more photos than I have made pages for.  

There are different ways to take care of that problem:

1     1. Pocket Plus Memory protectors: You can just put in the photos in the middle of the pages you have already made.  You can also make pocket cards from the scraps that are left over or you can do extra journaling spaces.

       2. You can use Flip Flap Memory protectors and put 3 photos in the place where 1 photo has been.  At times that means carefully taking off the photo already on the page so that it can go in the memory protector and still be on “top” to be seen.

     3. You can make some pages with the left-over scraps and some creative techniques.

If you go to my website, you can look under “What We Do” and find the word “blog”.  (You will also see CTMH TV which is also worthwhile to look through).  On August 23, 2018, the Make it From YourHeart CTMH blog looked at “Using ATTACH in Cricut Design Space”. 

There are several ways to do layouts and one way is to block a 3x12 or 4x12 space on the bottom or side and use stamped designs or Cricut designs and then put the photos on the other part of the paper.  There is usually room for a title and several 4x6 photos.  

The problem is there is usually not enough paper left of any size to do a repeat of the pattern that you started with. What I did was make 2 different designs: one used 2.5” circles on the side and the other used 2” circles across the bottom.  

I started with an 11.5” square for each.  The CTMH blog has a great step by step process for you to do the ATTACH process. (Note: I used circles, but you could easily have used squares or other shapes in the Cricut shape file) I am in the process of finishing up our son and new daughter-in-laws wedding albums and we have all these photos of people dancing.  I have been trying to figure out how to use more photos and not overwhelm the page.  Small photos where you don't need detail would be useful for this kind of layout.  Say you have lots of scenery that you want but don't want 10 pages of it.  I usually put to many photos on a page.  I really hate a page with only 1 photo.

I used neutral paper to do the Cricut cuts with.  Because it is neutral, you can choose to either do 2 of each page cut or use the “negative pieces” for the second page.  For this large of a piece, I would use a neutral color paper but I make it look like it isn’t just plain. (If the paper in the background looks familiar for those who have been in CTMH for a long time, yes these were Base Pages at one time.)

Many of the designs section off the side or the bottom.  Usually you do this with once piece of paper 3x12 or 4 x 12 but at this stage one usually doesn’t have 1 piece of that size left let alone 2 pieces.  I used the circles to do the major section and then, you can use shimmer trim, ½ x12 strip of paper, a zip strip, ribbon or take neutral paper and sponge color onto it to set the whole things off.  You can write or stamp words on this strip.  Remember that the single letters have lots of words that you can use.  You can look through your stamps and find sayings that would fit on ½ or ¾ or 1” strips. 

In the circle spaces, you can put photos or paper behind it.  You can do 2 photos and 2 paper patterns or 4 photos.  You can always Cricut cute things to paste over or in the holes.  You could put Glitter paper scraps behind them.  Using the actual circles for another page, you can sponge the edges or stamp on them or use stamps like “D1805” Repeatable Backgrounds in the colors of your paper scraps.  

You can also use “D1797” Watercolor Impressions and then stamp words over it.  

(You can do second generation stamping meaning you stamp on the ink pad, stamp on scrap paper and then stamp on your circle). You may have left over Complement pieces or shapes that would work well with the circles. 

You can use the other scraps that you have by randomly putting them on your neutral paper.  Put the photo sizes down and then place the scraps under the photos to edge the photos or create a pattern.  The other thing you can do to the large neutral paper is to use stamps like the Watercolor Impression and random stamp in the color of the scraps.  Many times, there was a stamp set that went with that paper and you can use those to random stamp in different colors over the paper. 

Remember that you can always turn your pattern ¼ around or more and it really can look different.  You can have the circles on the outside, on the bottom or in the middle.  It might look too top heavy to have it on the top of both pages. 

If you don’t have the Cricut Design studio, you can do the same thing with circle punches or thin cuts.  Thin cuts might be great for the small scraps that you have where they are too small for the Cricut.  If you do that you can punch/thin cut either the paper or the photos.  If you have different sizes of punches, you can punch a smaller photo, and have it matted on the large size with paper.

The other thing that I do with my scraps is make cards.  That is a blog for another day.  If you do any of these designs, please post them and share your creativity.