Waste not, want not for great card ideas

Papercrafting breeds scraps. Lots and lots of scraps. In the middle of assembling this card, I looked around at the scraps and designed and made another before going back to finish this one.

I started with the ribbon. It's this luxurious, satiny chocolate chip color from Stampin' Up. The Silhouette software at the time I made these did not have a gingerbread image I was happy with. So I manipulated a clip art pic using Microsoft Paint and cut out lots of gingerbread girls and boys from a matching brown using the Silhouette. I merged the letters for the "sweet" cut out and also cut out a coordinating offset for the "sweet" background. The star is also cut out.

Assembling the gingerbread trees was no picnic. If I were to do this again, I would merge the images to get one solid gingerpeople tree. Like a practiced procrastinator, my eyes and mind started to wander. I looked at the sheets of paper with gingerbread people-shaped holes all over. They looked like cookie sheets!

Well, now I had to stop what I was doing immediately and work on this new project. I reformatted the images I was cutting for the first card to get what you see here on the "scraps". Picked a new ribbon color and coordinating red paper and ink for stamping for the heart. In less time than it took me to plan out the first card, the second card is done!

Two great designs and less to throw away.

Of course, you can save so many scraps that you have a box full of one-off scraps you save "just in case". Don't let the little ideas keep you from great ones. Every now and again, scrap the scraps and start a new box.