Super Cute – Scraps Challenge

I’ve been really busy over the weekend completing challenges for my friend Sarah’s on-line crop at Lottie Loves Paper. The challenges are open until Sunday 14th April so head on over to the facebook page to find out more.

I was really thrilled to be asked to be a guest designer for for the crop and because Sarah and I have had so many funny conversations about scraps and what is worth saving and what isn’t, I decided that my challenge would be to use up your scraps.

There are lots of ways of using your scraps but of course the best way for me to use them is to back a cut file. I had this Paige Evans “Flower Heart (Heart of flowers)” cut file in my pile of blunders (you can just see the bit at the centre top that for some reason just didn’t cut) so I grabbed some wet glue, some fine scissors and my bag of scraps from Simple Stories Dream Big and set off for a quick visit to Wales.

People often ask me the best way to back an intricate cut file and this is a great example of lots of changes of colour. I always start with small central pieces like the flower centres and my personal preference is to draw through the reverse of the shape (to prevent drawing on your cut file) onto the reverse of your chosen paper and then cutting just outside of that line to give you somewhere to put the glue. Then I use a fine paintbrush and some wet glue and paste the back of that shape on the cut file so that you’re not trying to judge where the cut file will sit on the patterned paper. I then turn the scrap face up and carefully place the cut file over the top to stick it down.

Do you think I’ve used a few scraps here? Apologies for the difference in colour cast in the photos but I was in a gloomy room in Wales for some of them! You can see in the photo above that attaching the flower centres first means you can then apply the whole flower over the top without interfering with the front of the cut file. It also gives you a bigger area to apply the glue. The numbers on the back are to remind me to which flower was which as I cut them and stuck them in batches to make sure I got a good spread of colours.

And then this is the front, all finished! I used so many colours from the collection that it was difficult to find the right background so I used the packing technique with some Dylusions Pure Sunshine ink spray (all the sprays are greatly reduced in our Clearance section). I added my completed heart at an angle on funky foam and then I trimmed that page down and backed the whole thing on some fuchsia pink cardstock.

I then added my backed photo and lots of embellishments from the sticker sheets, some flat and some on foam, and of course I sprinkled on some enamel dots from the shop (also in the clearance section). It’s so bright and colourful, especially for a baby layout, but I love it! I hope you like it too and that you found these hints and tips helpful.

Now onto the challenges!