Hi friend! How has life been treating you? Grab your favorite beverage, snuggle in, and let’s have a chat.
Do you ever have those days where you feel there just is not enough time to get everything accomplished? I’m not talking about the work tasks that need completing. I’m referring specifically about the living part. The part that is supposed to nurture our souls, the parts that make life enjoyable.
A recent conversation with one of my brothers led to this topic recently. We were discussing how one of my retired brothers has found he is better able to care for himself now that he is retired. While working full time, he simply did not have the time or energy to take care of himself due to, well, working. There simply was not enough time in a single day to do all the things you should do to take care of yourself and work full time. Eat healthy, exercise, keep up with those important human connections, spend quality time with family, get enough sleep each night, and somehow do all of this around a full workday. Oh, and all without stressing about any of it. It’s exhausting just typing it all out.
The part of this I struggle with the most is getting enough movement in my day. My workday is spent sitting at desk, often on the phone or in meetings. Recently, articles for habit stacking have made their way into my social feeds. Have you heard of this? I don’t know that it is necessarily a new concept, but it certainly has gained traction over the past few years. Basically, if there is a new habit that needs to be developed, ‘stack’ it onto an existing habit. For example, I brush my teeth twice a day, every day – this is an existing habit that is entrenched firmly by now in my daily routine. I want to get more movement in, so when I get done brushing my teeth, I do 10 squats. Boom! I’m habit stacking. Now I get 20 squats in a day without thinking about it. There are some inconsistencies still, because life happens. But I’m getting movement in where I wasn’t before, and some movement is always better than none. This is a small win every day that I can celebrate.
I’ve recently tried to incorporate this into more facets of my life, including crafting. Years ago, I used to make cards from my scraps as soon as I completed layouts. I got out of this habit but am trying to incorporate this back into my crafting. When I first started doing this, I was afraid those I gifted these cards to would think it was cheap and childish. But I have found that the family and friends I gift these cards to enjoy receiving them as much as I enjoy making them. My mother-in-law has every card I’ve ever made for her, and on a recent visit to my niece and nephew’s house I spied her birthday card on display on a shelf.
How to get started with this is simple – Pinterest! When I am mindlessly scrolling on my downtime, I jump on Pinterest and search for DIY cards and pin away. One of the things I love most is sketches. This gives me an opportunity to make multiple cards fairly quickly using a ‘recipe’ of sorts. If I have larger blocks of scraps, even better – more cards to make.
Before I jump right in, I sort my scraps by size first. Any scrap that I’ve used in my Cricut, I cut down. I cut out the part that was cut out on my machine, then I cut the remaining piece into a square or rectangle.
I decide on my sketch and pull embellishments that will go with the scraps I’m using for the card. Lately I’ve been using white as my card base so I don’t need to pull any additional papers and I have a ton of white paper. For these cards, I used this sketch pinned a while back.
Next, I decide what scraps will be used for which part of the sketch and start creating.
Often, I will bulk cut sentiments when I have my Cricut out and have some scrap white or black paper. I keep the file saved, with the offsets, so that I can easily add a little extra to coordinate with the cards I make.
When I’m done with my cards, I’ll gather what is left and decide if there are any scraps worth keeping. For a couple of the scraps below I punched some large circles to use for embellishments. The strips can be used as border strips or flag strips. I already have plenty of these stockpiled, so most of these scraps were thrown away.
Hopefully, you give this a try, if you are a papercrafter. Leave a comment if you give cardmaking a try. It really is a great way to use up those scraps.