Nothing Matches - What Do I Do With This?!

I think we've all been there: one piece of paper left from a kit; oh, that paper is cute!; bought a "sale box" - I don't have anything that "matches"! What do I do with this?? 

Well, today I have two examples of what to "do with this"!

I bought this super cute fabric paper when an area scrapbook store went out of business... about five years ago.  (Anybody remember love, elsie?!) It is the only item from this brand I have ever bought, so what does it match?

Rule #1 - things don't have to match exactly. Pulling in different shades of the same or similar colors is good enough! Here's what I did:

I thought about what other paper I had with brown and/or pink in it... and remembered this older CTMH paper that also has animal prints in it which I thought fit the bill perfectly!  Since I don't like to take a lot of time on my pet layouts, I pulled some letter stickers out that I got in a Webster's Pages sale box. I don't normally buy letter stickers, but since I had some they were an easy solution. (Just to clarify, that title does refer to the cat and not the husband, lol.)

The Scrapbook Generation sketch I chose called for plenty of patterns, making it easier for this one pattern to look like it really belongs with the others.

I opted to use flowers for the embellishments because 1)my boy cats don't mind, 2)it is easy to layer them and mix & match colors, and 3)I have a ton of them! My stash is pretty large, so I have no hope of telling you what brands they are, but only the pink one above did not start out as flat paper flowers. I layered everything together and added pearl brads (the larger ones for sure are from American Crafts) and some rhinestone flourishes for fun.

Rule #2 - when in doubt, try to use papers from the same brand. They are more likely to carry similar colors across different lines, making it easier to find something else to work with.  Along with this follows...

Rule #3 - solids and single colors can make almost anything work!

At first glance, these two sheets don't look like they have much in common. But they are both from the same manufacturer - Webster's Pages. The sticker sheet on the left was from a sale box, with I think only one paper from the same line.  However, the bracket frame I wanted to use (same color/pattern as the blue leaves here) had nearly the same blue as some papers from another line of theirs I had purchased so I added this striped pattern. The other patterns I had left from that line were too "themed" for this layout, so I decided to go with single/solid colors for the rest of my papers.

The Scrapbook Generation sketch I used for this layout called for a large die-cut paper. Since I wanted to use that frame, I just added to a similar shade of cardstock and trimmed around the frame, leaving a border.  For the red-orange and brown, I used single color patterns from the same line as the stripe. They are a simple mottled pattern. Then I chose a CTMH red for the bases that matched the red in the stripe.  

More letter stickers from the Webster's Pages box sale, which were a similar green to the one in the stripe, made up the title. I pulled out the final color from the stripe, the lighter blue, with some of my flower embellishments.  All of the flowers on this layout were made with flat paper flowers that I layered together and used random brads from my stash for the centers.

That's all I have for you today!  I hope I gave you some ideas for using up those items in your stash that just don't "match" anything else you have.  I'd love to see your results if you decide to try my ideas - just link them up in the comments. Thanks for stopping by!