I Am Officially In Love

With my family of course.  Being wife/mom makes me so happy.  hmmm, now if I could just learn to let go of the feeling that I should always be doing something.........

With the new scrapbook store that I found that is just 20 minutes from my house.  I left with a headache from looking at so much great stuff!!!!!!

With my new classes.  OMGoodness the ideas, the ideas.  I can't wait to teach them!

With starting school back up again soon.....

With the Smithsonian.  Not only is it the bestest museum ever, it has some of the greatest activities.  Scavenger hunt in the art museum, artist lectures, concerts, movies heeello.  Love it. 

With scrappin photos that I printed out last week instead of last century, lol.  Yeah, i'm that bad.  And one of those to boot.  You know which one, "gotta scrap all those photos from the first 20 years before I print out new ones" one.

Do you have old, ugly (why did I ever buy this & what the heck am I goint to use it for?) patterned paper that you know you're never going to use?  I have a ton of it, probably literally.  Here are 10 things that I came up with to use it for. 

• Use the white back instead of cutting up a piece of white cardstock.
• Paint it, glimmer mist it, stamp it or emboss it than cut it up into decorative embellishments.  You can use paper piecing, cricuts, sizzix, quickcuts, slices or any die cut machine with very good results, you just have to make sure your paper is bone dry.  I especially love stamped & cut out flowers.    
• Use it as a template.  When I am designing a layout, I often cut regular copy paper to the size of the photo/s that I am thinking of using to see if I like the size and to plan placement.  Works like a charm.  I would use the white sides because it is much less distracting than a pattern (especially if it's ugly).
• Punch elements out of it and use the paper or the element as a mask.
• Use it to protect your work surface.  Old magazines work well for this too. 
• Sometimes I will have paper that I want to use as a base of my layouts but it is not strong enough.  I simply adhere it to a piece of junk paper to make it a little stronger.  Sometimes you may have to trim it a bit so it doesn't show, but it works like a charm.  Tape runners & not liquid adhesive seems to work better for this.    
• I read a lot.  It is not uncommon for me to be reading 3 or 4 books and a couple of magazines at the same time.  So (i'm sure you can see where this is going) I cut it up into bookmarks/placeholders.  Also great for making notes on when I see a project that I like. 
• Challenge yourself to use it. 
• Emboss it than sand it.  I have gotten some great looking mats doing this. 
• Use it to make patterns for boxes, shapes, cards, etc. 

I always love to get tips for using the stuff I buy, so share please.  What do you do with your ugly paper?