I have to admit, being a card maker, I’m not so hung up on the “acid free; lingen free” last-forever mindset that page layout crafters embrace. I mean, face it: no matter HOW pretty the card is that you /we make, chances are it’s going to be opened, exclaimed over — and then relegated to a dark drawer somewhere, until it eventually gets thrown away. And so *my* way of thinking is, “who cares if it doesn’t last forever?” I just try to make it as beautiful and appropriate as I can, for the time being. And THAT means that yes, I have been known to use paper that ISN’T AF;LF, or maybe isn’t necessarily even scrapping papers / cardstock. It could be typing paper, wrapping paper, or even elements recycled from cards ** I’ve** received.
Case in point are some cards I made recently. I was asked to make a 50th anniversary card, which I did. Lots of gold, shiny paper, with a thin matte of red behind it. Just a touch. Turned out beautifully. But before I gave gave the finished product to the asker, she phoned me and asked me to make TWO more!
Drat! I had used ALL of my shiny gold paper in making the first one. What to do? Well ….. I could go to Michaels and buy some specialty paper at $3.49 a sheet. Or, I could go to WalMart, and buy a whole PAD of sparkly specialty papers for $9.97. But no — the Frugal Scrapper in me cringes at the thought of laying out all that money for just a small project. There MUST be alternative ……
The alternative made itself known the other morning, just after I got up, and as I was going from my bedroom to the bathroom for my morning ablutions. I looked into my spare bedroom while “in transit” and what did I see? A sparkly — prismatic, even! — gold gift bag. Aha! A wink is as good as a nod to THIS scrapper, and I took that bag with me when I went down to my scrapping room.
It was a very LARGE gift bag: after I trimmed off all of the extraneous “stuff”, I still had the same amount of paper as two 12 x 12 sheets, plus more besides. My cards turned out pretty good, I think — and the “paper” I used cost about $1.25 at the Dollarama.
You can bet that the NEXT time I need special papers for a card, I’m going to peruse the gift bags at the discount stores, to see what’s available.