One of my early bookbinding instructors repeatedly drilled into us the instruction, “Don’t throw away your paper scraps, no matter how small.” She took unwanted scraps from class with her to use for creating collaged covers when she taught bookbinding to children. I am not very good at the “no matter how small” part, but I do save any scraps that seem large enough to be useful for something, someday.

Last weekend, in my drive to use up existing supplies before purchasing new ones, I went through some of my boxes to see what I had around. I found a large pile of decorative paper scraps, and a number of pieces of card stock and watercolor paper that I had apparently precut in anticipation of making ATCs and postcards. I decided to see what I could make out of it all.

I’m not very imaginative when it comes to this kind of thing, so massive collages and multi-media pieces were unlikely. I did, however, come up with some simply decorated items that I might actually use. So, here is my list of things to do with paper scraps.

Envelopes

I had some origami paper that I purchased from Kate’s Paperie during a visit to New York last year. I made a crane from one sheet and hadn’t touched the rest. Each sheet was about the right size to make a small envelope with enough left over to decorate a matching gift card.

The cards are each 3 1/4″ by 2 1/4″, and the envelopes are 3 3/8″ by 2 3/8″.

This one is the last of one of my favorite papers…

Envelope Liners

Speaking of envelopes, Paper Source also sells an envelope liner template kit for cutting liners for all their envelope sizes. Martha Stewart has instructions for making your own templates.

Gift or Note Cards

I often end up with long, narrow strips of decorative paper due to trimming. So I made more gift cards. The nice thing about these is I can match them to the books when I give them away. These cards are also 2 1/4″ by 3 1/4″. I also made a few note cards the same way using A2 flat cards.

Folded Gift Cards

With a scrap at least 3 1/2″ by 2 1/2″ glued to the front of a piece of folded card stock, I made gift cards large enough for a quick note.

Invitations or Announcements

These are some A2 flat cards (4 1/4″ by 5 1/2″) from Paper Source, with a 1 1/2″ by 3 3/4″ piece of decorative paper glued a quarter-inch from the top, bottom and left-hand sides.

I think the bunny ones would be cute as birth announcements or invitations for a baby shower.

Bookmarks

If I have strips of paper at least 1 1/2″ wide and 7″ long, I’ll make bookmarks by gluing paper to the front and back of a piece of card stock, and then rounding or angling the corners at the top.

Pillow Boxes

I used this pillow box tutorial from Craftster, but used a piece of card stock covered with Chiyogami paper instead of a card.

In the end I had a mostly mindless, somewhat therapeutic few hours of playing with PVA and my corner rounder, and I made a few things that I actually liked and a few things that had potential for future projects. Best of all, I used up most of my small scraps.