Waste not, want not

I’ve been following the lead of Leonie Pujol, as well as being sensible and not wasting paint and ink, and using rice paper and card to use up “left-over” paint and ink from my work surfaces, stamps and brushes (rather than just cleaning up with wipes and cloths and throwing them in the bin). Some of the resulting scraps are really pretty and I’m starting to make use of them.

The other day I was playing with a pretty new stamp (from an IndigoBlu grab bag I bought from Hochanda), trying out different ways of colouring it in. I stamped and coloured a few flowers, then cut them up. I was wondering what to do with them, when my husband asked me for a get well card to send to somebody. So I picked out one of my “scraps”, cut out a portion of it, and used it to make a card ...

The scrap in question was a piece of card I’d used to clean off my brayer, to practice stamp an image, to clean off my stamp (by stamping again and again until no ink remained), and to clean off a stencil. So it was ink and paint that would otherwise have been wasted. And now it’s been matted on to a piece of black card and used us as the base for a pretty card that will hopefully cheer somebody up. All it needed was three of the cut-out flowers and a simple sentiment stamped onto another scrap of spare card that would otherwise have gone in the bin. 

A card made out of leftovers - that’s crafty recycling.