Using up the scraps

My plan to reduce the Mountain of Stash has taken a bit of a blow the last few months as my craft-shopping habit has kicked in again, but this week I've been going through my scraps box to see what I could use up. There's a lot of stuff in there - bits left over from projects and kits, odd and ends that are just "too good to thrown away", interesting bits of packaging and advertising material that looked as if they might come in useful - I'd forgotten about half of it until I tipped it all out on to the table.

I selected a handful of co-ordinating pieces, using the colours in the patterned card as a guide

And put them together to create this

But really that hadn't started to make even a dent in the pile of scraps. Then I remembered the "Serendipity" designs that were popular about 15 years ago, and thought I'd see if I can remember how they were done. First I tore up a few toning papers into rough pieces

Then I stuck them down on to a piece of card - I chose a matching colour in case any showed through.  I used a wet adhesive and left it to dry before trimming the edges.

Next I stamped random swirls over with a silver pad and embossed with silver powder. The surface is very uneven at this stage, so you really need to use some kind of abstract design. Letters or a picture won't work as the patchy result would make it unclear. After embossing, I added further streaks and splodges with tow shades of glitter glue. When everything was dry, I left it to flatten overnight, under a pile of heavy books.

Finally I cut it into squares. I find the best way to do this is to mark the squares on the back and cut with heavy scissors or a guillotine. The layers of paper, card and glue make it too thick for a craft knife and a rotary trimmer could drag the torn, uneven paper edges.

I chose to make the squares about 1" (2.5cm) each, but other sizes or even shapes would produce interesting effects.  Once you have your shapes, let your imagination run free! Here are two cards made with mine

 

Having used up so many scraps, I just had to play along with The Craft Room Challenge,  because the current one is "Use Your Scraps"

And since everything I've used is old - even the technique - I'm also joining in with "Anything goes" at Use It Tuesday.