COVERED NOTEBOOK

Its a bit of a cheat to call this a technique, but I was pleased with the results of covering this discount store notebook with some lovely patterned paper, and so thought I'd share.  The blue is Bazzill, and the black strip is ribbon, which also doubles as a bookmark.  A few black adhesive pearls were used to finish.

BARGELLO BACKGROUND

Even although I've labelled this as a background, I think it could stand alone as a card topper.  Its the paper version of a well-known quilting technique and I've seen it in all sorts of other places so I make no claim to originality here.  I do, however, think its a great way to use up scraps of paper.  having said that I think I'll spend a bit longer chosing colours when I use it for a "real" project rather than just as a try-out technique for this blog, as I'm not totally convinced that these ones go particularly well together.
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LEAF PRINT

A very long time ago when I lived in PNG I made a little wall-hanging quilt from leaf prints from the garden.  I used fabric paint on calico, and did a few trial runs on paper first.  I found this one when I was sorting through some stuff in the craft room.  I think it might be a taro leaf, but so much time has passed I'm not sure.  I do know that lacking any equipment to speak of at the time, I just painted onto the leaf and pressed it with my hand onto the paper/calico.  I have scanned it for this example and turned it into a "pretend card" i.e. made on the computer.  I had rather forgotten about this very simple technique but think its time to rediscover it.  It would be a good way to embellish garden-themed scrapbook pages.

CUT UP YOUR STAMPS

I needed some words to go on this little panel  but couldn't find quite the right thing.  I saw a Kaiser (and no I don't work for them.....its just that they make some good stuff at a reasonable price so its a bit over-represented in my craft room) stamp that was almost right.  It had a religious text that was inappropriate for how I wanted to use this card, and in any case, it wouldn't have fitted in the small space with extra words.  A few snips with the scissors later and I had just what I needed.  Acrylic stamps (I have just found out) cut really easily, and if you need them as they were they can be somewhat reassembled on a clear block.  I'm now revisiting some of the unused text stamps from other sets I own to see how they can be made useful.  After all....."All things are possible".