Piece by piece – a scrapbooking watercolour project

Very often I am talking about the “real” scrapbooking. About creating your project from “nothing”. From scrap, from all these small pieces of paper which are so easy to throw in the rubbish bin while cleaning your work space.

In this same vein, I will show you another project – how easy it is to make something using only these “rubbish” pieces and how they are actually great craft material.

The main idea

As I said many times, I am not using these special designers work mats. Do not misunderstand me – they are great idea! I absolutely love the Tim Holtz one and would be happy to have it. The problem is that they are working against my main scrapbooking idea.

Аs a crafter with my own small business I stumbled into uncontrolled craft materials collecting. For two years I even didn’t even realize I didn’t need so much stuff for my work. In fact, all these materials were throttling my creativity. I was having huge trouble not only starting a new project (even though I was visualising it in my mind), but also finishing the ones I had already started. It was a nightmare period, but it’s gone now. So, to not forget this experience and to also help others like me, I wrote a book, sharing all of my painful moments and showing a path through: The Healing of a Craft Hoarder.

So, I am using my own paper “work mats” for other craft projects.

In the picture below you can see part of my workspace last evening. The mat I was using is a cover from an old watercolour block. When I finished all the paper, I kept the covers for my other scrapbook projects. The rule is: Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle!

So, you can see – the old signs from other projects make this piece of paper a great background for a greeting card. I tried a stamp, the blue acrylic lines make an interesting frame…

Scraps and watercolour

In the picture below you will see some other paper pieces I am keeping from other projects. Every sheet with elements for cutting has its white areas, which are great for creating small objects – like this flower.

Still working on the watercolour block cover, I made these flower elements on the remainder of my tag sheets. I cut the tags and kept the leftovers from the paper. And used my favourite watercolour marker technique to make these small floral elements.

The watercolour marker technique is great, because you can actually use any watercolour based marker. I love it! It saves so much space on my desk and I have so many bright colours to choose from!

And because I don’t like to throw out colourful pieces of paper, I just used my palette to make some other small elements for the greeting card.

After drying I cut the floral elements leaving a little white outline around them. Maybe this is my style, I don’t know, but I like it when the flat elements have this outline. Somehow it defines the shapes and makes the flowers (in this case) more “finished”.

Here you can see all the small decorative elements I made from the remainders of the tag sheets and the watercolour marker palette.

And the greeting card is ready! Simple, but with a double message. “Love you” is the main one. “Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle” is the second, hidden one.