Ugly Paper Contest - September 2016

The Challenge: Red Bear and I were each to make two cards.  One to mail to each other, and one to mail to Kidlet. We were allowed to choose our own base paper.

These are the papers we chose.

Papers

These are the results.

Zoo's Cards

Red Bear's on the Left; Zoo's on the right

Backstory
A long time ago, in another life, circa 2011, the Ugly Paper Contest was born.  Kidlet had purchased a big pad of truly ugly paper.  Red Bear and I were teasing her about it and wanted to know what on earth would she ever use such ugly paper for.  The Ugly Paper contest of course!

Of Course! How silly of us.

The first time, all three of us crafters made our attempts and The Farmer aka Himself aka Hubby, chose the winner. Quite often that is how the contests progressed and I still don't know if he ever knew who did what.  Kidlet and Red Bear most often won, I don't think I ever did.

He did have a farm to run however and wasn't always available.  One of us would choose the paper, make the "rules", and be the final judge.  Kidlet often chose the Worst colour combinations and came up with challenging rules.  Like the time "must use at least one alpha stamp but it must be part of the design, not part of a word".

Left: Red Bear
Center: Kidlet
Right: Zoo

Sometimes the background or base paper was part of the challenge, sometimes we could choose whatever we liked, or from within a colour family.  Sometimes the rules would change part-way through the challenge.

The best part was always seeing how different the results were from the same starting point. We also got to learn about each other.  Red Bear gravitates towards heart shapes and the colour red.  Zoo likes circles and either green and pink or green and peach. Kidlet was never pinned down except for the yellow/purple colour combo.

These are always a lot of fun, inspire creativity, and really take the pressure off.  We're starting with "ugly" so it's not our fault if the result is ugly!

Before Red Bear moved across the country, we took the ugly paper pad, divided it into approximately three equal piles, wrote identifying numbers on the back, and each of the three of us had our own stash in a 9 x 12 envelope.  Also included were some embellishments, stickers, "add-ons". That is how years later we can still have Ugly Paper Contests with the same papers.

Zoo

p.s. As I write this post, it is exactly two years later, Red Bear is airborne on her way here to visit.  Recently some WoW Friends, purring and Bearminimum, asked to see some of my artwork.  I was sad to realize that I have been a very bad craft blogger.  This is the beginning of an attempt to make up for that.  Thanks, Guys! You two are wonderful friends of Kidlet, babysitting Mom.

Using strips of scrap paper

Hello, yet again. I am never on the computer to work and then three blog posts in two days. Zoo will fall off her chair! It is a very grey weekend here and my life is in a weird holding pattern and for some reason doing these posts is a nice break, so here goes another one.

Zoo sent me a link to use up some paper scraps, knowing that I don’t throw anything away and was running out of room in my scrap paper box.

The link was      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv2EL8jZhZ8    and showed how to glue/tape thin scraps of paper onto printer paper and then die cutting out an image or saying to make cards. My scrap paper box was full, so I gave it a try.

I first used up just a few pieces of paper out of my pink scrap box and here is the result. I didn’t measure the width of the strips I cut, but just winged it with my cutter. I liked the slight variances in the widths of the strips. I don’t have a huge selection of dies that cut out sayings and shapes that are not for tags, so I chose my Fredward Bear Die Cut  - by Memory Box Inc.

 It was a little blah with just the bear cut out, so dug out my punch-anywhere flower punch by EK Success Brands and punched out the background. I saved the little flowers, etc., that came from the punch in case I wanted to use them. Much better!!

The two finished cards turned out so cute that I spent an hour or two cutting strips out of more scrap paper and making more blanks to use. Believe me though… a little paper goes a long way! 

 I had an idea to use different edging patterns to cut out waves, etc., from the striped paper. It produced a neat effect without too much difficulty. By tracing the pattern onto the back of the striped paper, it was just a matter of cutting along the lines and placing them in order to be glued onto a plain coloured background paper. I chose black card stock as my background to show off the stripes. I then used my Big Shot to cut out shapes. Like usual, the negative part cut out can be used on the inside of the card or for another card.

 

I also free-handed a dinosaur to cut out.

This was a fun use of scrap paper. I have started saving thin strips of scrap paper in an envelope to make it easier next time.

Take care! Red Bear : )