The Cut-Up! By Judi Kauffman for The Queen’s Ink

Remember that batch of envelopes I stamped with the new collection from Elizabeth St. Hilaire? The batch that included a bunch of absolute DUDS? (Please scroll back if you missed that tutorial...) Well, instead of consigning them to the trash I decided to cut and tear them up and turn the pieces into cards (shown above). And while I was at it, I fussy cut the trio that I did like because the flowers were so pretty and mixed nicely with some of the leaves from the duds.

You may recognize the black/copper oval (an extra from my Build a Pumpkin tutorial). The turquoise and bronze backgrounds are glitter paper dry-brushed with turquoise acrylic paint. The words and phrases are from Tim Holtz.

It’s a lot of fun to turn flops into something new, and it’s always a good idea to combine leftovers from various projects. Nothing wasted. New ways of seeing.

YOUR TURN:
1. Keep those DUDS! Don’t toss the cards, envelopes, gel prints, and other items that haven’t worked out well.
2. Keep looking at them. When an idea strikes, do some slicing and dicing.
3. Combine and rearrange the pieces, mix elements from more than one project.
4. Layer. Over-stamp, add stenciling. Keep going till you’ve created something wonderful OR until you end up with another DUD to use at some point in the future.
5. Instead of cards, bookmarks or other such projects work directly into an art journal.
6. At any point in the process, throw away what you just can’t bear to keep!