All right, it's time for another frugal tip! Today I have two ideas for you if you want to save money or just make your supplies go a little farther.
First pull out one of your layouts and take a look at the back of it. You see a nice clean square, right? Aaaahh! Wasted paper! If you look at the back of my layouts, they look like square bullseyes. Why? Because I cut out squares from background papers that are going to be covered by additional layers for future use. This trick works particularly well with double sided paper, because you can use the reverse side of the paper you cut for coordinating embellishments, photo mats, etc. Even if you have all the money in the world to spend on scrapbook supplies, (and if you do, can I be you?) this technique can still help you stretch your supplies. I actually discovered this idea when I was creating a layout with some paper that I only had one sheet of, and I wanted to use the patterns on both sides.
The second idea is a way to utilize your scraps. Now I do have a pizza box that I throw random scraps into to later use on cards. But in general, I don't save scraps for future scrapbook pages. The organization is difficult, and since I tend to work within one paper line, I found I just didn't use them. Then one day, I needed some orange flowers for a layout and found a scrap to punch them from. Instantly, a new idea was born. Now when I have pretty that are too small for borders or photo mats, i simply pull out a punch and get to work. I throw the flowers, stars, circles, and square into a small tupperware container until I need them. Now I don't have to rush to the store searching for hot pink Prima flowers; I just look in my little container to find handmade ones! I layer the circles and squares to create borders, embellishments, or page grids. This system takes up very little room, solves my "need a matching embellishment" problem, and saves me money! Pretty good for two seconds of punching paper. Here's a layout I created using my punched scraps:
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