sometimes the leftovers...

...are better than the original meal! this is true for food... (may i offer you a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce? oh, i see you have one already!) ...and also in cardmaking, which is why this fortnight at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ we're making cards that feature "holiday leftovers" by which we mean: paper scraps, offcuts, an image you colored or diecut or fussy-cut but never used, a small piece of ribbon too pretty to toss away, the last sticker in the packet or... whatever "leftover" thingybobs you have laying around. Of course you can mix in new stuff, too. because it'd be fiscally irresponsible *not* to partake of some crafty black friday sales, wouldn't it?! here's my card:

scraps of embossed watercolor paper previously tinted with various distress inks; vintage music paper scraps stenciled using a rather runny mixture of glazing medium and blue colorburst powders that i deemed too messy for the original project i was working on, but liked enough to save; peacock blue poinsettias from a garland i bought last year to hang on our stairs and which ended the season with some -AHEM- "bald spots" lol; snowflake punched from pink paislee patterned paper; october afternoon chipboard snowflake sticker; my mind's eye brad; paper accents white glossy cardstock base

once again, unintentionally, my card turned out to be composed entirely of scraps... what can i say? i've got A LOT of scraps! in this case, i found a few that were too small to make a whole card, so i teamed them up together, kind of like a quilt block. btw, that is one of my top tips for paper scrap usage: check out blogs and patterns and pinterest boards that relate to applique and quilting-- because sewing people definitely know a thing or two about how to turn tiny unrelated items into glorious art!!! ♥

speaking of glorious art, why not hop over to ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ where you can see stephanie's card and all the glorious eye candy in the readers' gallery!