While trying to organize I also get to try and that is an operative word – try to clean up my desk!! As a self proclaimed paper hoarder – I find it extremely difficult to throw paper away – so I often collect bits and pieces of paper and ribbon from unfinished cards or leftovers from cards made. SOOOO… every once in a while I have a paper crafting clean up day and try to make as many cards out of the scraps on my desk as I can – it is a great creative exercise and stretches your right brain quite a bit! Here are some of the cards I created today … remember the scrapbooking page from Wednesday’s blog post well here are the inside “scraps” from the flowers I used to make the card from that post – I just couldn’t throw it away (see I’m very bad!!) but the card turned out really cute – don’t you think!?

The base of this card was an experiment from making my own shimmer cardstock I ended up using another piece of  cardstock other than this Misty Moonlight base but kept it to use later (see that is why my desk is always in disarray!) I also had a bunch of 1/2 inch strips of Balmy Blue cardstock from cutting down that color cardstock for a prior class… ever wonder what to do with those colored cardstock strips? The next two cards are great examples of fun ways to use these types of strip scraps! I used shapes in coordinating colors as the sentiment focal point and created a striped background over the shimmer cardstock base.

This second card I striped a Gorgeous grape cardstock base diagonally with the Balmy Blue strips and made an alternating directional pattern. I stamped and colored with Stampin’ Blends the smaller flower from Good Morning Magnolia (#149298) and the Magnolia Memory Dies (#1149578) – which is on the retiring list – this is a beautiful set/die combo – I will be sad to see this one go!

The next four images are from the Fine Art Floral Suite I used one 4″x 5 1/4″ piece of the 12 x 12″ DSP with matching acetate for a card a while back so I cut the rest of it up and made three cards and a beautiful and easy Scrapbooking page.

This next card started with a discarded card front with two “block” stamped images in Magenta madness. I stamped the flower image from Art Gallery and added the words thank you multiple times in a background pattern! I really like the way this one turned out! The In Color ribbons are retiring  – so if you want any of these ribbons I would suggest ordering them sooner than later.  The current Hostess code is R37A4MHH.

I had some left over pieces from some cards I did about a month ago from the Friends Are Like Seashells Suite. The next two cards are made with those scrap pieces.

The last five cards used the majority of the last scraps on my desk!! I rearranged and now I am off to clean out the samples in my catalog binders. Looking forward to seeing you all on Sunday evening at 7PM for a fun Facebook Live! The first card uses the soon to be retiring Quite Curvy sentiment (#154430), the second card uses the retired Flower and Fields Sale-a-bration DSP and the Thanks sentiment is from the retiring Many Mates (#152633) which also has a coordinating die set – this is a great sentiment set! 

Always a fun exercise to stretch yourself and try to create using the limited supplies from your scrap bin or in my case from your desktop!

I hope these cards inspire some creativity and to go create art one stamp at a time! Below are some of the retiring items used for these cards!

Happy Stampin’,
Natalie