Mojo Monday celebrates 300 layouts this week!

To help celebrate, I created two different layouts from this week's sketch:

The first layout is for a male birthday. The elk head is part of a stamp from the Stampin Up! Yukon collection. I colored in only the part of the elk that I wanted to stamp with my Tombow dual brush marker #879. Thanks to my newest gadget, Stamp-a-ma-jig, I was able to place the elk perfectly within the shape. The shape that the elk is on as well as the mat behind it are from the Silhouette online store, as well as the tree image behind it.

The second layout is a "thanks a latte" coffee-themed thank you card. I plan on adding a coffee gift card. The coffee beans paper in the background is a high-contrast image that I designed based off from an open stock photo. The chocolate dotted Swiss paper was from a scrap in my paper stash. The stamped images (again perfectly placed thanks to the Stamp-a-ma-jig tool) are from Fiskars Latte Love stamp collection. The shape that the latte cup is stamped on (and its mat) is from the Silhouette online store.

Mother's Day Card - Mojo Monday 292

I love the blog Mojo Monday (mojomonday.blogspot.com). Every Monday they post a new card layout and then during the week anyone can contribute their creation utilizing that layout.

Here is the layout template for this week, Mojo Monday 292.

This is my design using that layout, a Mother's Day card. I've had this really cool paper from American Crafts (a la Carte) that I bought some time ago and hadn't used yet. I really love how this turned out!

Paper scraps addict

A common dilemma of paper crafting is what to do with the leftover paper scraps. How small is too small to save? And how do you organize them? By color, size, what? I'd love to hear your ideas!

I used to save any scraps that were about 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" and tried to organize them by color. I've tried clear expanding sorters (such as for coupons), zipper storage bags, etc. I found out, though, that I was so overwhelmed with all of the paper so much that most of the time that the scraps just piled up on my work table. I'm now keeping scraps no smaller than 3 x 3 and just toss them into clear Sterilite Snapware bins. I use one of the bins for the patterned paper and then the other three bins contain everything else. Now I'm no longer obsessing about what color category teal paper would go in (is it blue or is it green?) and my work table is now a lot cleaner!

I also had a "crazy" idea about what to do with the scraps that I do throw out. Why not recycle them instead of mixing them in with the regular household trash? I keep a paper grocery sack under my work table now and toss the paper scraps into there. When it gets full, I put it in our recycle bin. (Make sure your waste disposal service allows you to recycle paper first!)