Wednesday's "What's on the Desk?"

Remember my What's on the Desk posts?  I used to make something with whatever bits and pieces were lying on my desk.  

Well, it's back...at least for this week.  

I've been collecting LOTS of bits and pieces.  They sit in the "pit of despair" on my desk and look rather forlorn.  So the other night I dumped them all out and perused the mess, trying to decide what to do with them.  Use them or throw them away?  I decided to give them a second chance and began to create.

Since I had a lot of pieces and very few of them actually coordinated, I decided to make a bunch of 3" x 3" cards.  I often use these when I mail little gifts to customers, thanking them for their order; or I send them to folks who purchase my retired products, thanking them for helping me "de-stash".

So let's see what I came up with:

Eight mini cards, all different.  Let's look at each one:

 OK, I lied about them all being 3" x 3".  I had this label on my desk, so it needed a slightly larger card.  This one is 2-1/2" x 4".  And all I did was take a piece of Brights DSP (which had been cut on a diagonal for a card I made previously--why do I save these things?) and added it under the label.  A few Tinsel Gems finished it off.  

This little mini-beauty was easy - I had the rose cut from Distressed Gold DSP, so I added it to Basic Black and heat-embossed the greeting from Darling Details.  Simple and effective!

A left-over Valentine project, the panel with the heart and greeting fit perfectly on another 2-1/2" x 4" card of Thick Basic White.

Quite possibly my favorite, this blended background was to be used for a class, but I changed my mind.  The greeting (from the retired Friends are like Seashells) was stamped in Pretty Peacock on the peacock and Lemon Lolly blended square, and I had heat embossed the shells prior to adding ink (the emboss-resist technique).  And I just happened to have two little left-over shells cut with the Pearlescent paper - so pretty!

I had a few Sweet Citrus discards, and they went together to make this card.  

The Harlequin-style background was a saved piece after using most of it for another card.  It's strips of shimmer paper adhered to a Window Sheet and cut into strips.  Too much work to discard the little left-over, and it made a perfect layer for this little card.  The flower (Gold Shimmer paper) was also a discard, so it matched perfectly!

OK, THIS one is my favorite!  The circle, little die-cut flowers and the leaves were the bits-and-pieces and they made a lovely mini-card.  I had cut the flowers/leaves from paper that I had dragged a stamp pad over; the color variations are really gorgeous!

And then there's this 😂:

My least favorite, and probably destined for the trash...I had that same stamp pad-dragged-over-paper piece on my desk, so I cut it with the lemons from Sweet Citrus.  I also had another paper in green (same technique) and cut the leaves.  But these lemons almost look like fish...and I'm only including it so you can see that some of my creations aren't very good.  I sometimes just have to toss them! 😬

So that's what kept me busy the other day--and now I have a great bunch of mini cards, and a nice clean desk, ready to start collecting another pile of discards.

What do you do with the bits and pieces you have left over?  Do you use them?  Or throw them?  Let's see what the consensus is.  Leave a comment below and we'll find out if it's worth using all our discards!

(But after this exercise, my vote is USE THEM!)