Off the desk...

Decided to share one of my idiosyncrasies with you...  as many of you know from seeing my RubberRoom, I have an AWFUL time letting go of scraps of lovely paper left after a project.  So I often will challenge myself to make a card with only scraps or leftovers off my desk.  I thought I would start a new feature explaining my methodology & encouraging many of you with a similar bent.

When I do clean off the desk top, anything large enough for a sentiment or to record my Copic colors (see below) but smaller than an A2 size is put in a small set of drawers .  (see right) So I do count anything in the drawers as "on the desk".  A2 size DP (Designer Paper) or CS (Card Stock) is filed by color in a shoe box.  Many times I also have left over embellishments such as the butterflies, flowers, twine, ribbon, etc which go in the top drawer.  The four drawers below that are color coded: blue & green, red and purple, yellow, orange and browns & last white and black.  I taped pieces of colored CS to the front of each drawer indicating the colors.  

Sooo - today was a good day to make the 2 cards above "Off my desk...".  Not ones I would send normally, or even enter in challenges, but the grandkids don't have a clue (yet) that these are leftovers.  

The system is easy, I pick up coordinating papers in the biggest sizes and start trying to make a layout.  In this case, even the focal images were left over stamped images that I colored with Copics to match the color scheme of the papers.  If I have papers in really small pieces, I will punch them to make the butterflies or flowers - and in this case, I also cut out pennants to hang across the top.  The only thing not off my desk are the pearls or gems I used as final details.  Sometimes I will doodle as with the faux stitching or the details on the butterfly.

Hope you can find something useful here - enjoy your scraps!

~ginny