Hi everyone and welcome. We’ve all got them – a box or drawer of leftovers. Those little bits and pieces which we can’t bear to part with, the last of a pack of paper, bits of stamping, collected items for recycling… you get the idea! This month you are going to see the Teams creating with leftovers in projects using Eileen’s dies. Get your own scraps out and make something along with us. Go get crafty!
I confess to having SO MANY scraps! Thankfully at least they are organised in separate bags for each colour family, but they do need using up... eventually. For some reason the idea of creating whole journal spreads felt a little overwhelming this week so I hit on the idea of keeping it simpler yet still making something that could slip into my Eileen Journal - collage postcards and envelopes;
Inspired by Elizabeth Robinson's fantastic tutorial for stamped postcards and envelopes I set to work on batch-making some for future use using Eileen's Maker Forte 'Snail Mail Postage' stamp set.
To give them a vintage feel and prepare the base for other media I added gesso and some tea-staining to each one - this has the added benefit of plumping up the paper fibres to make each one feel a little more weighty.
Is there a point at which you realise you have a 'problem' with saving all those leftovers?!!!!
I did some experimenting with adding neutral scraps to the envelopes and postcards with some interesting results. My suggestion would be to keep it simple, sticking to a few larger contrasting pieces rather than lots of the smaller scraps as you can end up in danger of 'losing' the lower layer of stamping. It also works really well to mix up the textures - fabric, thicker wallpaper, book page bits, even embossed card would all work really well for this.
Taking the simpler envelope I decided to use the flowers and leaves dies from Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits 'Folio Page, Pocket & Flowers' die set in combination with the stem die from her Sizzix Thinlits 'Shadowbox Frames #1' die set to cut up more coloured scraps.
Here's the finished result, including a stitched border and additional white pen drawn around the larger inside petals;
Rather than go with a similar colour scheme for the postcard I added different scraps to a second one and then got to work with more of the dies from Eileen's Sizzix Thinlits 'Shadowbox Frames #1' die set.
Here's the finished result, again including a stitched border;
I may go back and add some hand-stitching and/or lace trims when putting these into my journal, but for now it feels good to have used up some scraps and been creative.
Thank you for joining me today. Make sure to check out all the fantastic projects and tutorials from the rest of Eileen's team members - links to their posts can be found on Eileen's blog throughout the month.
For now thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx
