Free Scrapbook and Craft Supplies

Today's post will bring you even more FREE ideas, which will help you be GREEN for Eco-Awareness month! I think you all are benefiting from my not feeling well for a few days! Well, I guess I am too! Today's freebies are in your house! These are things you can find laying around in your house. Alter them with ink, cut them, sand them, stamp over them… the sky is the limit!

Free Scrapbook Supplies around Your Home

Would you believe that you have FREE scrapbook supplies at your home? One of my readers even went to her Mom's and found tons of things! Take each item and either use it as is or alter it, stamp it, rip it, sand it, etc. For example:

• Stickers that come with your junk mail
• Use the envelopes that come with your junk mail! The patterns inside them work great as backgrounds or for embellishments **see note below
• Ribbon from gifts, etc. There was some great ribbon around some socks I bought that I used on a project! Try using your ribbon in a new way…run a bit of adhesive, such as Sticky Strip along the back of the ribbon. As you apply it to the project, scrunch it and bend it rather than attaching it in a straight line. Also, you can ink it to distress it or add depth to the color.
• Buttons- while I believe you should pass along clothes that don't fit, if it is in bad shape, such as torn or stained, you can clip off the buttons to save!
• Save the fabric for your fabric projects too! Vintage fabrics are all the rage!
• Lace trim from an old tablecloth or handkerchief that is unusable.
• Any metallic bits and bobbles that you see that are of appropriate size and suit your taste are great to use too. Add a piece of chain, ribbon, or twine to hang them from your project, or you can glue them on directly with strong adhesive. My glue of choice for metal or heavy objects is E6000. If it is not too heavy, Tombow Multipurpose Adhesive works great too! Don't forget your alcohol inks are great to alter metal.
• Charms or beads from a broken necklace
• Costume jewlery, especially brooches and pins.
• Clothing tags—many of these are unusually shaped or have unique graphics** see note below
• Old greeting cards with fun artwork or sayings** see note below
• Wrapping paper or wall paper scraps** see note below
• Tissue paper—there is a great technique where you stamp it then glue it in a scrunchy way over a colored project to make it more subtle and textured.
• Dictionary, sheet music, and novel pages are great to use **see note below
• Paper clips
• Paint chips** see note below. Paint chips are fantastic embellishments. Use your punches to punch out shapes that feature several colors from the card. All the great colors can accent a card or scrapbook page really well! Plus they would be awesome tags! Add a piece of plain cardstock to the back for journaling or use a journaling stamp on the colors. Add a bit of journaling, stamp a design onto one of the squares, or embellish the chip with some stickers to make a unique tag for your scrapbook layout. In some cases, you can even use the name of the paint color as a fun title for your page.
• Laminate chips** see note below. I discourage you from going to a home improvement store and just taking multiples of these, as they cost the store much more than a paint chip, I do believe it is proper to gather 4 or 5 once a year or so. You can stamp, sand, ink, and alter these tiles into great embellishments or tags.

IMPORTANT NOTE: While you can create many interesting and unusual scrapbooking projects using items from around your home, it’s important to realize that supplies not originally intended for scrapbooking may not be acid-free. If you’re worried about archival safety, test your supplies with a pH pen or use copies of photos that would be hard to replace. To protect your precious memories, don't add tags made from paint chips, greeting cards, or other non-traditional materials to scrapbook layouts containing irreplaceable photos. Unlike the scrapbook supplies you purchase in a craft store, these items are not acid-free and archival safe. Even if you're working with copies of photos, you should try to keep any non-traditional embellishments away from the pictures themselves in order to minimize the risk of damaging your prints.

Thank you for stopping by today!