Scrappy Accordions

I decided I should start with the largest scraps and work my way to the tiny bits because there will inevitably be more of the latter as we make cuts to the big stuff. Coincidentally, Connie Stewart posted a video about accordion fold cards on Thursday. I went through the big box of' scraps and retrieved every piece that was at least 5 1/2" x 12". There were eight of these. 

It's easy enough to cut and fold and find matching scraps and get all that together. The thing that slows me down is designing (such as it is) the focal image. Which stamps? Which colors to pull in? How to fill the space so the design looks intentional? I only managed to get three cards done last night.

I had a lot of Well Suited DSP. It's fairly masculine but the stamp sets I have really skew toward the floral. The sheep are new, and I saw Zoe Tant had dressed her sheep with DSP. I followed her directions. It is a great effect, but not gonna lie, takes time. 

This is what the inside looks like.

I had also done a focal image for that pink striped version. But I hated it. 

I spent some time at lunch grabbing some stamps I thought would work. After work, I got to stamping. I was pretty happy with the butterfly cards but kept thinking, "this needs something." I went to the third 13x13 box I have where I store embellishments and found raspberry sequins and some goldish rhinestones. Perfect! (These were a total surprise. I have no idea why I have hot pink and raspberry sequins in that box, but I guess they were waiting for their moment!) I did the Christmas card next. And was well and truly finished when I added wink of Stella (a shimmer medium) to the pine cones. The hearts were hard. The main color of the paper paper is a one I do not have (Lovely Lipstick) and the paper is nearly monochromatic. I looked at the comparisons, and decided that Magenta Mambo would do. I liked how it came out--and more rhinestones!--but thought it looked really busy with the background. In Connie's video, she handles this by extending the message piece on the inside. Eh voila!

The chess card was the very last card I put together. I had pulled a piece of pink paper (there is a pink stripe in the DSP) to back the focal image. But when I decided to give up on the pink, it came together pretty quickly! I'm super happy with all these cards and I am elated to tell you that I did not use one new piece of paper in making these cards--all scraps!