Hi, Connie Nichol here this morning with a couple of projects that recycle sewing patterns.  If you’ve seen the Summer Issue of Creative Scrapbooker Magazine, you’ll know I wrote a whole article on this topic.  Be sure to grab the magazine if you want a whole bunch of other ideas.   Among other things, the patterned tissue paper from old sewing patterns makes a great background for cards and scrapbook layouts.
Here’s one of the cards I made.  Quick and simple and I think a perfect masculine birthday card.  Adhere a layer of a recycled sewing pattern to a piece of white cardstock using gel medium.  A gel medium is simply a binder without pigment that comes in various thicknesses, sheens, and transparencies.  I like the Dina Wakely matte gel medium from Ranger.   Just use a sponge brush or paint brush to apply gel medium to the base layer of cardstock and press the tissue paper onto it.  You can also dab more gel medium onto the top of the tissue paper.  Wrinkles are good, they add texture.
After the paper dries, you can enhance it with stencils and ink (the brick stencil from Stampers Anonymous is one of my favourites) or add a ton of texture by dry embossing using an embossing folder.
After you’ve finished your background, add a stamped image and a sentiment.  I used these Stampers Anonymous stamps and black archival ink from Ranger. The beer mug was coloured with Chameleon markers. I trimmed the stamped images, mounted them with cardstock and put my card together with a variety of adhesives from Glue Dots.
These Pop-up dots from Glue Dots are a perfect way to add dimension to a card while the tape runner is a great way to adhere the sewing pattern background to the card base.
Here’s a scrapbook layout using the same idea.  I adhered sewing pattern tissue to a piece of 12×12 cardstock using gel medium and used the brick stencil from Stampers Anonymous to add bricks.  The patterned paper is from Wild Whisper Design, a Canadian company based in Calgary.  Be sure to check them out, they carry some unique bright beautiful products!

Thanks for stopping by.   I  hope you found some inspiration on how to recycle those old sewing patterns.

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