You may recall that a while back I took Shimelles perfect collection class and was really pleased with the results. In a nutshell it involved cutting up co-ordinating patterned papers, arranging the cut up sections to form base pages which could then quickly have photos added along with journaling and embellishments.
I by no means exclusively use this method but I do enjoy how it allows me to get started very quickly with a page. I find more and more that I am snatching a few minutes here and there to scrap and on these occassions working in this way allows me to get pages scrapped in far less time than I would normally take.
At the weekend I pulled out one of my base pages I had made cutting up the Basic Grey Bittersweet collection which had been gathering dust in my paper storage.
It didn't take me very long to add border stickers, a photo, some embellishments and journaling tot his page but it struck me that the large block of very busy pattern on the right is not something I would normally have on my page. Infact I would probably have been left at the end of the collection pack with three or four patterns that would never get used because they are too busy.
I really like the effect and will be using some of my difficult to use but beautiful to look at patterns in this way in the future.