Stash Busting with Scrappy Canary: Punch it up to use your patterned papers

Welcome to Stash Busting with Scrappy Canary, it's Ruth here with an example and an idea to use up lots of smaller pieces of patterned paper. July's PL kit has gorgeous 6x6 paper from Teresa Collins, with really dreamy colours, I wanted to bust a lot of that gorgeous colourful stash in my layout, so I pulled out a trusty punch.

A word about buying punches, I find the most boring designs to be the most useful. Circles, hearts, stars and scallops are the ones I pull out most of all, they match everything and don't fight with the other patterns. Next most popular for me are simple and unthemed designs like butterflies and notepad borders, things that can add meaning to a page without being super themed on their own. Butterflies might mean light, whimsical, free, girly, outside, flying, happy and notepad borders might mean school, teacher, writing, learning, serious, youthful, untidy or any number of other things, if you pair it with a relevant story. When you buy your punches, think about what you might use it with. Highly specific shapes can be hard to use on lots of pages without it being a bit repetitive, BUT if you are making lots of travel layouts or mini albums, then an aeroplane punch might be the image that ties all your pages together, so I'm not saying dont buy themed shapes, just that you need to know you will get value from it, whereas circles are easily used over and over and over.

 With so many patterns that all match each other and look good together, using a repeating punch to bust some 6x6 paper pad stash is a great option. You know that the papers will all look good bunched together as a very clever designer out there has already made sure of it! I dont know about you but I find that I get a lot of 6x6 pads piling up unused. I use a handful of pages for a layout, card or PL page but there are still so many left, well I say PUNCH it up!!
Cover the page in the, if you want more ideas for how to cover a page in punched shapes, check out the amazing Paige Evans who does a lot of quilt-inspired piecing on her layouts and uses her punches a lot!!
Once you have the background covered in punched shapes, just treat it like another peice of patterened paper, don't be afraid to cover up some of the designs with your photo and papers as you create your page, or work from a sketch (your own or one of ours!) and then you will know where the photo and embellishments will be later and can save yourself from punch a few of those shapes?
In my final touches, I added some bling and brads to a few of the hearts in a visual triangle, sometimes those little details can really make it feel finished. I hope you feel inspired to stash bust some patterned paper too and share the results with us (#scrappycanary #stashbustingSC)