Unwanted Catalogues

Irritating when unwanted catalogues arrive, isn't it? All that dead tree turned into a thick book of tat that you didn't ask for. Sigh.
Well, I have fun dismembering them for paper of useful colours and textures. A friend of mine turned 60 recently, and as he's a fellow member of the Vegan Organic Network I decided to make a card with a Growing theme.
I wanted to make some carrots and some peas in pods, so I needed orange and various shades of green, as in the picture. I cut strips of the orange paper and rolled them up to make nice textural carrots, cut bright green carrot tops, and used a hole punch to make little green peas. If you work in an office which has a hole punch then it's worth making lots of little circles with paper scraps - they come in useful for all sorts of cardmaking projects, from peas to Pacman to polka dots. And it has the agreeable effect of making your colleagues think you are mad.
I had a bit of a play with the layout - I found a nice third-of-a-page in the catalogue that was a nice soft green to use as a background. The photos don't really show how nice and textural the card is which is a shame, but it still looks nice. I just added the words 'to Peter' and it made a nice card that went down very well.
The rolling orange paper to make the carrots is the closest I get to 'quilling' - rolling little strips of paper with a quilling tool, to make little curled shapes of paper. It's a beautiful art and quite satisfying for the patient. Quilling makes a very textural card, which always adds class. I was quite proud of my little carrots!
Enjoy your vitamin A,
Jehanine x