The inspiration for today's project hails from Paper, Scissors, And Superheroes- the blog of master cardmaker Betsy Veldman. When I spotted her tutorial a couple of weeks ago, I knew that I had to try it as soon as possible (plus, how awesome is that blog name?!?).
I started by gathering my scraps in much the same way as I did for yesterday's mini album project- by opening the color drawers of my paper scraps organizer and pulling out coordinating pieces. This time I just went for two color families, though, since I realized I only have a few sentiment stamps and didn't want to make eighteen and a half thousand birthday cards at the same time (why do I have two birthday stamp sets and almost no other sentiments?).
I then trimmed those strips to 8 1/2" in length and used my ATG gun
(does anyone else have one ATG of "cheap" tape for project like this and another of the "good" stuff
for layouts? Or am I the only crazy one?) to adhere the strips to sheets of plain white cardstock (I got mine at Staples). 
I made sure to use plenty of adhesive (thus the reason for breaking out the cheap tape) since these sheets will eventually be cut apart and I didn't want any little pieces falling off the edges.
After I finished adhering all the strips, I cut the pages into 4" x 5 1/4" chunks, per Betsy's instructions. I also grabbed a few sheets of kraft cardstock from my stash and quickly made some 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card bases using my trusty Martha Stewart Score Board
(love this thing!).
I also had some fun digging through my stamp stash, though I only used a small fraction of what I pulled out. For some reason I have tons and tons of image stamps and very few sentiments! Luckily this was fixed for me yesterday, completely out of the blue but also at the exact moment that I was getting really frustrated about it. I love it when stuff like that happens! Now I just need those goodies to get here...
Assembling the cards was easy (if a bit time consuming) at this point. I adhered a patterned piece to the front of each card base, then started digging through my embellishment color bins in search of little bits that I could cluster on the card fronts.
About halfway through the assembly process I found that I was really gravitating toward using my newly acquired "Just the Ticket" stamp and die set from Papertrey for the sentiments. I knew that was going to be a good purchase!
Another good recent purchase? A set of Jenni Bowlin ink pads! After hearing rave reviews on these from the Peas I tried a few and just love them! The colors are so lovely- you can see the "Chewing Gum" colored butterfly peeking through the window of this card (cut with Papertrey Ink's "Mat Stack 4" die).
I chose yellow as my "pop" color for the green card set.
If you're looking for more ideas for cards you can easily make from paper scraps, check out Julie Kirk's "Going Postal" feature on her blog, Notes on Paper. Her cards are perfect for using up all those tiny little bits of leftover paper.
Tomorrow's post will focus on an even smaller group of scraps- short strips and small chunks- that are perfect for making tags!