cutpastesteph

Hellooo. An intro, if I may...

I'm currently a 46 y/o AuDHD lady; married, with 1 adult "kid" still at home. We have 2 little dogs (Chi-mixes).

For the last 15 years, my hobby/hyperfocus/dopamine trigger has been paper crafting (especially collage art) via art journals, mail art, zines, artist trading cards, assemblages and other miscellaneous junk. I like maximalist styles; lots of colors, bold graphics, patterns, eye candy overload. It's a hobby and I like to have fun with it.

I'm here to share my makes and try and make this a blog for my own personal creations. If you have any papery/crafting/journaling/glue questions, pls ask! I'm a nerd and like to help!

ɪɢ: ᴄᴜᴛᴘᴀsᴛᴇsᴛᴇᴘʜ

And now for something cute.

Since my last post here, I finished another (fairly big) project: a scrapbook for my dogs. I've been thinking about making it since last year. Finally got the pictures printed (through Google photos), collected new supplies and got the book. Then I had to procrastinate for a month or so....and then once I got working on it it came together pretty easily.

I used a 5x7 photo album as my book. I was partly inspired by someone on IG who used a 4x6 photo album to make a mini collage style scrapbook. That size ended up being too small for my liking, so I went up to the next photo size.

I didn't get too many new supplies. Besides the album, I got new pattern papers and alpha stickers. I printed a lot of freebies from digitalscrapbook.com and cut a lot of die-cuts with my Cricut. I also made stickers out of their toys - just took photos of them and cut out the backgrounds in Procreate.

A lot of the pages are simply the photos mounted on cute paper, but I also made themed collage spreads. I had to print a couple of pages of smaller scale images to fit. Before starting, I made an outline of all the pages I wanted to make, based on the photos I had printed and their personalities. It really helped me fill the book out.

I have hundreds of photos of my dogs, so I focused on the time we've had them together. Trixie came first and we added Roxy the following year. This is a nice little intro to them.

More artist trading cards?! I swear, I'm not getting back on this train...but this is what happens when I have another, more meaningful project to work on and I'm too chicken shit to get started on it.

.•♫•♬• 𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖈𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓 𝖈𝖗𝖆𝖋𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌 •♬•♫•.

My mini composition collage book is done! This is my second one. By pure coincidence I finished it around the same time I finished the first one last year. April has been good for finishing journals. And this is my first finished journal of 2026! Now what? 😅💀

Collage artist trading cards.

I finished my mini collage journal (yay!) and had quite a bit of paper leftover. So I made two 12"x12" masterboards and cut them down into 21 ATCs. Minus a 4"x6" section I wanted to keep for myself. There are also some offcuts left that I may turn into some sort of mosaic cards...or idk? We'll see.

"Reality Bites"

Progress in my mini composition notebook collage journal.

I'm leaning more into textures with this book. Letting what's usually just the background be more of a star and trying not to force "focal" images...though some still show up. It's a bit new for me, but I'm really digging the results.

What I've made lately.

In a funk and not feeling particularly motivated or creative lately, so I did a messy "mood dump" spread in my collage comp notebook.

Superb Owl and some collected bits in my dailies notebook. A friend sent me the turd card because he knew it would make me laugh.

Back to some bookwork in my "dailies" - catching up with Xmas and New Year spreads.

We spent Xmas with my folks back in my hometown. Husband likes a yearly dip in the Gulf of Mexico to celebrate the day and it wasn't TOO cold. I'm not a big holiday person, but wanted to record it in my little book with some photos. I need to make use of personal pics more often.

New year, new craft cave snapshot.

I've been prepping a lot of stuff, behind the scenes, so far this year. It's weird. It's not artblock...but it's like, I feel more strongly the need to set the stage, so to speak. I've been making books, reorganizing, purging old supplies, obtaining new ones. A bunch of nesting work.

I made a couple of new booklets for bookwork in 2026. Also prepped another mini composition notebook.

The white one is a BIIIIIIG sheet of Koh-i-Noor drawing paper, folded zine style....but then trimmed and saddle stitched and partially glued. The books I make are about 20% actual skill, 80% brute force MAKE IT WORK IT'S JUST PAPER.

The other one is a Trader Joe's bag. I dismantled the bag until it was one long sheet with the handles at either end, then accordion folded it, trimmed, glued the backs together and covered the spine with gaffer's tape. I collaged on images from the off-cuts and also glued in some extra fold outs and pages.

Here are the art books, journals and book adjacent things I started and/or finished in 2025.

I came across this style of handmade bead looking at tassel inspo. They're in the same wheelhouse. I got super excited when I realized I could repurpose doggie bag rolls as the base of the bead.

I've been saving these little cardboard tubes because I knew I'd figure out something for them and finally did. Sweet validation. I've been wrapping them in papers I painted up in Procreate before adding the fabric and trims.

"FOUND" (2021)