Using Left-overs with Maja

Hello! I bet you, fellow scrappers, are literally afraid to throw any bits away – they always may come in handy, right? Especially, when it comes to beautiful papers! But the pile of scraps grows bigger and bigger – time to do something about this Let me show you my favourite way to utilize those bits of paper: the patchwork or mosaic technique.

I usually employ my punches (square and rectangle shapes), but as a matter of fact, just a pair of scissors will do

Having punched a handful of shapes, I begin the fun

The simplest way is to glue sqaures into a square – and sew. I usually sew with a zigzag stich, trying not to forget about pulling all threads to the back of the card and securing the ends with pieces of tape – you don’t want to lose your thread, do you?

Of course, you can experiment and arrange your pieces diagonally – I recommend starting from the middle, for the ends to look more natural So we glue the first square in the middle and arrange the rest symmetrically. When you get to this point:

turn the card over and cut off all the extending parts:

and then use them to fill the gaps in the pattern:

As I have mentioned before, I usually sew with a zigzag stich, but the straight one looks just as nice

Of course, you don’t need to sew your patchwork/mosaic – if you don’t have a sewing machine just ink the edges of all shapes to expose them better.

The ways of arranging your pieces are actually limitless, e.g. in this way:

…or this, to use even the smallest scraps:

One more advantage of this technique is the fact that the background is decorative enough as it is, so you don’t really need many more mebellishments to get a stunning effect