Scrappy Up-Cycling

After spending days organizing my MANY paper scraps, I'm now working to USE them.  I decided a great way to do so was to use up-cycled focals.  Here are 2 of the resulting cards.

Card #1 (above): The golden background paper/frame is from a wallpaper scrap!  The blue is from scraps of glimmer paper. The bird is cut from a used calendar.  The music notes are from my stash. The "Happy Birthday" is cut with a Happy Birthday Caps die from Divinity Designs (formerly Our Daily Bread Designs), and the frames/mats are cut with a Journey Rectangle Long die from Fun Stampers Journey.

Inside:

The same materials are used on the inside with the same Journey Rectangle Long dies, a die from Divinity Designs' Many Blessings stamp/die duo, and stamps from JustRite's With Sympathy stamp set.

Card #2:

This card started with pieces cut from a greeting card that my grandmother received.  The added papers are all scraps.  The gold was embossed with a Spellbinders M-Bossability folder called Imperial.  The leaves were die cut using dies from Spellbinder's Botanical Swirls & Accents.  The additional flower were made using a cream colored flour from my stash, combined with free-hand cut pieces of pink scraps.  The greeting is from HOTP stamp set called Heartfelt Greetings.

Inside:

I used more scraps to make borders for the inside. The border was cut and embossed with a die from Spellbinders Classic Postage Stamp Edgeabilities.  I backed it with scraps of the two colors of pink that had been used elsewhere on the card. The flower was made in a similar way to the one on the front - with additional leaves from my stash.