Scrapbooking on a Budget - secrets 16 - 18!

Hello friends! It's been forever since my last Scrapbooking on a Budget post. Today I want to share a few of my favorite secrets! They are all related to the same topic, but are important enough to be highlighted separately.

Secret # 16: Use your scraps.

We all like new products and new papers, but once in a while it's good to create a page or a few cards using just what you can find in your scraps. At some point all of those papers were new and loved. Another interesting fact is that since all of the papers in your scraps are cut into various pieces, they may actually guide you in a slightly new direction while designing your page.

A few weeks ago, I challenged myself to make a page using only scraps and here's what I got.

I picked a color combination and started pulling out pieces of paper that matched it. Even my background yellow paper is a combination of two pieces - it has a space in between, but I knew my photos will cover the space.

Some of these papers are older - like the one with white dots on green from the Scenic Route paper company that doesn't even exist anymore; and some were bought on my last trip to LSS - like that gray diagonal stripe by October Afternoon, but was already used for another project earlier.

Here is a close up for those who likes to read the story and check out the details. ( I just realized I haven't stitched anything on the page... that's really rare for me :)

Another example of using scraps is a set of five cards I shared last week - yes, all of them were made using scrap pieces of paper. That's actually one of my favorite way to use up some of the leftovers because cards don't need big pieces of paper.

Secret #17: Make your scraps easy accessible!

That's a big one. It made a huge difference for me when I changed the storage solution for my scraps. I used to keep them in colored plastic envelopes -

but honestly, as soon as I placed anything there I lost interest and value of that item pretty much immediately and I never, seriously never wanted to pick up an envelope and start searching for a paper unless I specifically new what I was looking for. Even though in the beginning it seemed like a perfect solution, I hated taking everything from an envelope to look for something I might use.

After getting a new scrap table, I changed the storage solution and that changed the way I look and treat my scraps today!

I have a long and skinny drawer right in front of me. I placed three lids from old decorative boxed that measure about 6x10 each, and sorted my scraps in three categories:

1. papers in blue and green colors
2. pink and grey, and some purple (I don't have a lot of those)
3. yellow, orange, red and brown.

I have a separate little drawer full of white scraps of paper, because I use a lot of whites.

Now, it's easier to pull out my drawer and check if I have something there before going to my new stash. But there's one more thing to it - what do you consider a scrap? Since my boxes are only 6 inches wide, anything larger than 6 inch, I keep with regular or new paper on my paper rack.

Secret #18: Any paper larger than half the original size keep with new supplies. 

This way your paper rack will always look fuller and will not make you go and spend even more money on new supplies! I never consider a piece of paper scrap if I only cut three inches off of it. If it doesn't fit into my drawer - it is kept with the new papers (unless I don't really like it anymore, then my daughter gets it).

I hope you could find some of these tips helpful. Thanks for stopping by and enjoy scrapping!

See you soon!