Today I’m sharing a technique that is fantastic for using up your paper scraps.

Before I share the technique though, I want to tell you how I organize my paper scraps. For a long time, I just had them sitting in a small bin, all colors mixed together. I wasn’t sure on the best way to organize them, but I did discover that I didn’t use them when they were like that, and it needed to change.

I decided to sort them by color, and place each color into an plastic envelope.

This makes it super easy to find what I’m looking for, and works great for making cards with the paper tearing technique.

You will need to decide which colors you want to use. I decided on three colors for my cards, but there is no rule here. You can do more or less.. Choose any pattern you like, but be sure you have enough of the same pattern to finish the card. Vertical strips should be 5″ in length, and horizontal strips should be 3 3/4″ in length.

I explain the tearing process in my YouTube video here, and written instructions are included in the tutorial.

On my horizontal strip card, I used different patterns and attached the strips in no particular order, starting with the bottom strip and working my way up. The colors I chose were blue, white and pink.

With my vertical strip card, I used the same patterns for red, white and blue colors, and repeated them across the card. I started at the right edge and worked my way left.

I left a border of the white cardstock showing for each card, so you will want to remember to center your strips on your white card base. If you don’t want a white border around your strips, have the strips go edge to edge. You will need 5 1/4″ long strips for vertical strips, and 4″ long strips for horizontal strips.

Check out the tutorial here.

If you have two tone cardstock, I did an earlier post on the tearing technique.

Any questions, feel free to reach out!

Happy Creating!

Jen