Christmas buttons and cards from scraps

Love them or loathe them, we all have them.

I'm talking about paper scraps of course.

Ordinarily, I'm quite ruthless and throw out anything that's smaller than a photo... unless I totally love the collection (which happens a lot) and then I can't throw anything out. I end up with a whole pile of this:

A work in progress folder is great for keeping them all together, by the way.  ;)

Too small for a layout. All the cool bits already used up. What to do? The choice is obvious: Chuck it or card it. 

Here is a quick and easy way to whip up a couple of cards:

Step 1:

Keep one bigger piece of the plainest paper (about 2x4" per card) Cut all your other papers into strips. Mine were 4" long and any old widths:

Step 2:

Glue them on a piece of paper 4" wide:

Step 3:

Sew a line along one side of each strip:

 

Hate sewing? Skip that step!

Step 4:

 Run some double-sided tape along the back of the paper, catching all those threads as you go:

Step 5:

 Glue it on a card, trim and place the bigger, plain piece of patterned paper along the top. The edge where the papers meet needs a border to hide any mess. I used silver sequin string and some cotton lace (see next photo)

There you go, the base is done and you have made enough for 2 or 3 cards in one go. 

 Step 6:

Now on to decorating! You'll just need some pretty embellies to spruce it up. Look in the Christmas embellishments section. You'll be spoiled for choice. 

I like the cute Christmas buttons. Here I used one with a star flower, a holly charm and some red & white twine on a white ribbon rose:

 And here is one on a mini doily surrounded by a pearl wreath. To make that, wrap some pearl garland around 3-4 fingers 3 times, overlap the ends slightly and tie them together with some thread. The pearl garland will fall into a circle all by itself. Glue it down with some strong glue or glue dots.

And there you have it:- 2 pretty cards made from some tiny scraps and a few embellishments, including silver sequins that come in 1 metre lengths from my2angels.

Now you have no more excuses to let those scraps overtake your craft room!