#TGIFC414 — Use Your Scraps — Tropical Leaf Bundle

Happy Friday!!! Our theme for this week’s TGIF Challenge is “Use Your Scraps.” This theme raises a big question, do you keep your scraps? I know stampers who keep every single scrap, no matter how small and others who don’t keep any. I tend to fall in the middle. I keep larger scraps, especially basics. For colored cardstocks, I only keep larger scraps because I don’t like the mess. And then for DSP, it sort of depends how much I like the papers! Haha!

My card was inspired by an Instagram reel I saw last week by Kaitlyn Zumbach @kz_creates. She painted a beautiful alocasia plant with a geometric background. In particular, I really loved the colors and layout of her artwork.

My card was also inspired by the colors in the Fancy Flora Designer Series Paper that I used in the background. One of the sheets included Soft Sea Foam and Calypso Coral, a combo I never would have picked on my own, but it was simply gorgeous!

The “scraps” portion of my background involved cutting 1/4″ strips from two different prints of Fancy Flora DSP. (If you’re a hoarder of scraps, just cut up what you you have on hand.) The horizontal strips were fairly plain with just a little color variation, and then the vertical strips included the print with both Calypso Coral and Soft Sea Foam. Then, I just start weaving them. At first, I used a little SEAL adhesive to keep the pieces in place, but as I added more strips, the whole thing became more solid.

For the leaves, I used the Tropical Leaf Bundle (an Online Exclusive.) I inked up my stamp with Soft Sea Foam ink, then used Sponge Daubers to add Soft Succulent and Evening Evergreen ink directly to the stamp. Afterwards, I spritzed the stamp with water and stamped on Basic White Cardstock. Depending on how much water I added, the ink blended more. I actually preferred the leaves where I spritzed a little more. After the ink dried, I stamped the veins with Soft Succulent ink and punched out the large leaves with the coordinating punch. For the small leaf, I did the same thing, but without the Evening Evergreen ink.

For the Basic White background, I used the Fern 3D Embossing Folder. I also added some Iridescent Pastel Gems in Calypso Coral.

Be sure to click over to the TGIF Challenges Blog to see more examples on how to use your scraps. Then, create a project of your own and add it to our challenge using the Linky Tool at the bottom of that post. I can’t wait to see all the great ideas!

Have a wonderful and creative day!

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