Serendipity Squares

One of the best ways I've found to use scraps is to make serendipity squares.  I am always surprised by how nice they look when they are done because while I'm making them they don't look like they'll amount to much.
They are really easy to make:

• Take a piece of plain paper or cardstock to use as your base.  Then glue little bits of various scraps of paper all over it, letting some of the base paper show through as you wish.  Make sure you cover the back of the scrap completely with your glue so it will adhere when you cut this up. You can add other embellishments like scraps from sticker sheets, stamping, embossing, whatever you wish.  The most important thing is to have a variety of elements placed pretty randomly all over the page and to have them glued down completely. (see sample below).

• After your adhesive has dried, use your paper trimmer to cut your paper into strips - I cut mine into two sizes -  1"  and 1 1/2", but you can make them whatever size you like.  Then cut the strips into squares - in this case, 1" squares or 1 1/2" squares.
• Choose cardstock or paper in a complementary color to serve as a mat for your serendipity squares.  Cut it into squares 1/4" to 1/2" larger than your first squares (depending on how wide a border you want - I like them just 1/4" larger). Then glue your squares to the mats.  They should look something like this:

Now you can use them on projects as you choose.  In my first example, I used some stacking Dazzles Stickers on top of one of my serendipity squares to create the focal for my card.  Here are a couple of other examples of their use - some note cards and a scrapbook page:

For the scrapbook page, you can see that I used peel-off stickers as a border around my serendipity squares.  Here's a close up of that: