If you've got a box of craft scraps sitting in your studio — bits of fabric, old book pages, tea-dyed papers, little odds and ends you couldn't bring yourself to throw away — this short video is for you. I do a live 15-minute challenge on camera, pulling about ten random items out of my leftovers box and making whatever I can with them, no plan, no overthinking. The result is a collage piece, a journaling spot, and a tag, all ready to go into a future journal.
What we cover
This is a creative warm-up exercise built around using up craft scraps and leftover journal bits. I show my system for keeping a bits-and-pieces box, walk through the full 15-minute challenge in real time, and end up with a few small embellishments — including a fabric collage piece, a tea-dyed journaling spot, and a handmade tag — made almost entirely from leftovers.
What you'll learn
How to run a 15-minute scrap challenge for yourself — including:
- How to pull roughly ten random items from your scraps box without rummaging or second-guessing
- How to set a timer and just start, even when you have no plan
- Why the limit (on time and materials) is actually what makes it work
How to turn a collage piece into a clean journaling spot — backing a messy reverse side onto tea-dyed paper so one side is a collage and the other becomes a readable, writable journaling page.
How to use machine sewing to hold a collage together — sewing around the edges and across the layers to secure fabric, paper, and loose bits without gluing everything flat. It adds texture and keeps things from falling apart once the piece goes into a journal.
How a piece can change direction mid-process — I start thinking this will be a journaling spot, shift to imagining it as a front cover piece, and land somewhere else entirely. That's not indecision; it's the challenge working as it should.
How to make a quick tag from whatever's left — inking the edges, using a tag template, and sewing around a small scrap to make something tidy and useful. Tags are always worth having on hand — they slip into pockets, tuck into envelopes, and fill gaps beautifully.
How to keep a bits-and-pieces box as part of your regular journal-making workflow — pre-made signatures, loose pages, small embellishments, and little collage pieces all living together so that when you're building a journal, you can just reach in and pull what you need.
Tips & gotchas
Pull about ten items and stop there. The whole point of the challenge is that you work with what's in front of you — not what's deeper in the box. If you have too much spread out, you'll start hunting for the perfect piece instead of making something with the imperfect ones. A small, random selection is a feature, not a limitation.
Set a real timer. It sounds obvious, but the 15 minutes isn't really about finishing something — it's about stopping you from overthinking the start. Once you're moving, the timer doesn't matter much. I went to about 20 minutes in this session and nobody punished me for it. The rule is loose; the starting is the point.
If the back of a collage piece looks messy, that's not a problem — it's a design opportunity. Gluing it down onto tea-dyed paper gives you a clean surface for journaling on the reverse, and suddenly what looked like a flaw becomes a functional two-sided page.
Keep your sewing machine accessible if you can. I had to factor in setup time here and ended up not filming the sewing itself — something I'd do differently next time. If stitching is part of how you work, having the machine close by means it actually gets used in a quick session rather than feeling like too much effort.
Let the bits and pieces you make go back into the box. Not everything from a 15-minute session needs to become its own project right away. The box is the system — you feed it with scraps, and it feeds you with ready-made pieces when you're building journals later.
I pulled a collage together and ended up deciding on my next journal before the session was even finished — the pocket piece fit so well that I just kept those pages together and let that become the plan. That's the real value of working this way: you don't need to know what you're making before you start. The scraps usually tell you.
