Hello friends. It’s
Ursula here, to share with you a bit of tutorial goodness on using up the
extras. If you are like me, you end up
with odds and ends from various products that you don’t quite get around to
using.
I’d like to present a couple of ways for creating fun
add-ons for your projects. These will
use up some product leftovers that are taking up space but that you can’t bring
yourself to throw out.
Below you’ll see a few things that have been sitting on my
desk and need to be put to good use.
Some of them are going to end up in the project I’ll share today.
In my studio, brads are absolutely notorious for having the
odd 4 or 5 (or 10!) leftover, so we’ll start there. (I never need to buy
another brad! Of course, we all know that won’t stop me.)
You may have noticed that shipping tags have made a strong
come-back in the scrapping world recently.
Today, I'm going to show you how to put together a couple of different
tags using those leftovers as the focal point for tags. Then you can decide how you’ll use them.
I'm starting with a mask (another item that sometimes gets
neglected at my house). I’ve chosen a
light mist to add pattern to my tag. You’ll notice each tag has it’s own
different masked image, but the colors are the same to keep them cohesive so
they’ll work on one page later.
To that, add a stamped border or sentiment. I'm creating a ‘Go, See, Do’ collection of
tags so I’ll use letter stickers from my collection of leftovers to create one
word per tag.
Now, since I want to put a dent in my brad collection I'm
adding some brads to add color, texture and dimension to my tag (and to find
them a happy permanent home).
I repeated the process with 2 more tags and here is the
result.
Tip to notice: I stayed with similar colors for my letter
stickers, brads and embs. If I were to
add, for example, a fushia brad it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. However, keeping the colors in the same tones
allows me to mix and match patterns and colors from a variety of product lines.
Next, add additional elements. This is the perfect place to use that arrow
die cut you’ve been wondering how to use.
Remember that since this is eclectic, you can mix lots of colors you
might not normally use together.
There are options for how you might use these. Individually, they could easily be used as a
starting point for a greeting card.
However, I'm creating a layout.
I chose a selection of photos from my recent Instagram
collection. (can you keep a secret?
Instagram makes me want to go places just so I can capture a moment! LOL)
I created three Photo-Strips with my images in Photoshop,
printed them on 8.5 x 14 photo paper and cut them to size. I don’t have a large format printer at home,
but I get around that by using the legal size paper setting on my printer and I
can print up to 8.5 x 12 if I want to.
Once I got everything down on the page, I added some more of
the leftover goodies around my page. See
those cute puffy house, car and cloud stickers?
They were leftovers from a kit which I had previously used to bits.
You’ll also notice I snuck in even more brads. They are lined up in little rows to the sides
of my tags. Altogether, I managed to get
17 brads on this page! I also dug
out some stamps I hadn’t used in a while.
Because I have a lot going on with the brads and tags and
photo-strips, I didn’t need a lot of paper.
I stuck with only 4 small strips layered beneath my photo strips.
I tucked in a few extra bits here and there, making sure to
layer and overlap to pull all those details together.
Since you can see it up close in the photo above, I’ll point
out how I blended two colors of mist together to get a bit more depth. Simply layer the tag under the mask and spray
one color first and add a touch of another color on one side.
Supplies
Cardstock (American Crafts);
Papers (October Afternoon, The Paper Company, Recollections, Studio Calico);
Die Cuts(Amy Tangering, Scarlet Bird Designs); Mists(Studio
Calico); Wood Veneer(Studio Calico); Stamps (Studio Calico, Melissa
Francis, Martha STewart); Letter Stickers (Studio Calico, Bella Blvd);
Chipboard Arrows (American Crafts); Brads (American Crafts, MME,
Basic Grey); Masks (Studio Calico, Kesi’art, Donna Downy) Ink (Prima)
Vellum .
I find that challenging myself to use up some things I’ve had around for a while usually results in a super fun project and a cleaner scrap space. So how about you, what do you need to use?
Thanks for looking!
Ursula
