If your scraps drawer is overflowing and you've been meaning to do something with it for months, this episode of the Scrap Busting series is a good place to land. I pull a random handful from my junk drawer — old Tim Holtz packaging, punched circles, a mystery chunk of something, a few strips of paper I genuinely can't identify — and spend 20 minutes turning it into a collage page. It's not precious. It's not planned. That's the whole point.
What we cover
A single 20-minute scrap busting session from start to finish: grabbing a random pile from the junk drawer, placing pieces down with no plan, and finishing with sewing, stamping, and a few small details. I also share what these sessions are eventually building toward — a big, purposeless, purely-for-fun chunky journal — and show a few earlier pages from the series alongside today's finished piece.
What you'll learn
How to structure a 20-minute scrap busting session so it actually works The shape matters more than the materials. The first ten or so minutes are for placing things down — collaging, layering, committing. The remaining time is for details: a sewn wiggly line, an extra punched circle, a brad to anchor a bow. Knowing this in advance stops the session from turning into ten minutes of staring.
Working with truly random scraps — including things you can't identify Part of what makes these sessions useful is that you don't get to curate. I grabbed a sparkly pencil case falling apart at the seams, some Tim Holtz packaging, a piece of cellophane from a flower bouquet, and old book pages. The goal is to make something, not to make something out of good materials. The constraint is the exercise.
How to tie and attach a paper bow with a brad A small but satisfying detail — a simple bow made from a scrap strip of paper, held down with a silver brad pushed through the page. It breaks up a composition that's gone a bit too rectangular and adds just enough dimension without requiring anything special.
Cutting wiggly lines on the sewing machine as a finishing technique Once the timer goes off, a quick pass on the sewing machine — wiggly lines along the top and bottom edges — adds texture and movement to a page that was sitting a little flat. It takes under a minute and changes the feel entirely.
Using a circle punch to create repeat elements I use punched circles throughout: placed as accents, stacked in threes, used to break up the boxy quality that collage pages can fall into. Three of something is almost always the right number.
Stamping directly onto a collage page mid-session Stamping here isn't precious — it's another layer. I stamp onto the page without overthinking placement, and if it lands a little off, that's fine. The collage absorbs it.
What these sessions are actually building toward Each page from this series is going into a chunky journal with no purpose — no writing, no journaling, no memory keeping. Just a big book of small pieces of artwork made from rubbish. That reframe — making something for pure fun, not for content, not for an audience — is part of what makes the creative muscle worth exercising.
Tips & gotchas
The single most useful thing I've learned from doing these sessions is that regularity matters more than any individual result. When I do them every day, ideas come easily and the pages look good. When I take a break — even a few weeks — I'm back at the beginning: staring, second-guessing, producing a crappy scrappy pile that doesn't inspire anyone, least of all me. The creative muscle is exactly that: a muscle. It needs the work.
The 20-minute format works because it removes the option to overthink. But it only works if you actually commit to it. I fell off partly because I started feeling like I should be filming every session — which turned a daily creative habit into a production obligation. If you're doing this for yourself, do it for yourself first. Film it or don't.
Don't expect the output to be pretty. Some of these pages are genuinely ugly. That's not a failure of the method; it's the method working. You're not making a masterpiece, you're keeping your creative responses quick and loose. The pretty pages come as a side effect of doing the ugly ones consistently.
One practical thing: place everything down in the first half of your time, then spend the back half on details. If you spend twelve minutes rearranging and only eight minutes actually gluing, you'll run out of time before it feels resolved.
If you're using wet glue on a layered collage page, dry it under weight. Layers buckle, especially when old book pages or lightweight scraps are involved.
There's something freeing about making a book that isn't for anything. If these pages have you eyeing your own scraps drawer, that's exactly where I'd suggest starting: one handful, twenty minutes, no expectations.
