Karen's Crafting Fun: Blessings Layout and Paper Saving Techniques

Friday, December 8, 2023

Blessings Layout and Paper Saving Techniques

I created this layout featuring the Evergreen collection for a class I taught at a recent Ready Set Crop retreat weekend. I did this class to teach the layout as well as to teach a few techniques to the group.

The inspiration for this layout came from the Silver Bells Scrapbooking Workshop. This was the first thing I taught in the class - how to reuse an existing workshop and change it to work with a different collection. I always advise people to make sure to download the cardmaking and scrapbooking workshop directions from Close To My Heart during each catalog as these workshops are a great source of inspiration for other projects.

The second thing I taught was to look at the workshop directions and see if there are some ways to save paper when you cut the pieces out. For this one we saved paper in three ways:

1. The large background matted piece on the left hand page is cut from 1 10" x 10" piece of patterned paper and one 10 1/4" x 10 1/4" piece of cardstock. I changed this to 2 4" x 4" pieces of patterned paper and 2 4 1/4" x 4 1/4" pieces of cardstock. I cut each of these squares along the diagonal into 4 triangles. These triangles were then placed 1" in and 1" down (or up) from the edges of the base page.

2. The 3 vertical strips on the right page are cut from cardstock at 2 3/4" x 11". What I did instead was to cut 3 pieces that are 2 3/4" x 1 1/4" and 3 that are 2 3/4" x 1 1/2". The 1 1/4" pieces I used at along the top and I dovetailed the 1 1/2" pieces and used them along the bottom.

3. I used a technique called "gutting" on the 8 1/4" x 8 1/4" cardstock mat on the left hand page. To accomplish this what you do is basically cut out the inside of a piece of cardstock using your trimmer or a ruler and craft knife to create a frame. What I did was align the edge of the cardstock up on the 1/2" line on my trimmer and using the cutting blade cut from the 1/2" mark to the 7 3/4" mark - as shown.

Once you cut one side, rotate the cardstock 90 degrees and repeat this cut 3 more times. Once complete you will have a "frame" with the center of the piece that you can use for another project. We used this piece for the 4 1/4" x 6 1/4" photo mat on the right hand page.

To complete the layout I added some pieces from the Evergreen Digital Art Collection I cut with my Cricut along with some elements stamped using the Evergreen Scrapbooking Stamp Set.