How-to: Upcycled Paper Swatch Cards

Slice your upcycled paper to a standard size.
Slice your upcycled paper to a standard size.

1. Choose an upcycled paper. If you’re collecting fabrics or papers, which you’ll glue down, or even many paints, you don’t need to worry about the base color of your paper. Upcycled cereal boxes, or mailing boxes, or any kind of cardboard or paper will do nicely.

If you’re collecting markers or colored pencils, however, you’ll probably want to start with an upcycled paper that’s a tone of white, although writing won’t distract from the sample. I have one old, torn, vintage dictionary with white pages that I use for everything from pinback buttons to smash book embellishments to these swatch cards.

2. Cut to size. I cut my swatch cards to 2″x2″. They’re large enough to label with even the longish Prismacolor names at that size, and easy to flip through when they’re punched at one corner and threaded onto a book ring, but they don’t take up a silly amount of space in my bag, so I can happily toss them in even when I just think I may run into a sale.

Upcycled Paper Swatch Cards (2 of 4)3. Sample and label. On each of my swatch cards, I include a sample of the color and its name, if applicable. The name is written in ink on a piece of white masking tape that I put under the sample–if your upcycled paper is plain, you can skip the extra step of the masking tape.

I like to put a sample even of markers and colored pencils and paints, which I could easily shop for by name, in case I want to compare different brands. There are several fine brands of artist’s markers, for instance, and if a shade of red offered by another brand intrigues me, I like to be able to compare samples before I splurge.

I keep my swatch card sets with the supplies that they’re sampling. I share my art supplies with my kiddos, who don’t put things back as neatly as I do, so the cards are also nice to flip through if, for instance, I can’t quite find the exact blue that I want, but don’t know if I should bother digging through the tumble of the markers in the bin to search for a closer match.

And, of course, they’re always handy just in case you’re ever in a store and want to call me and say, “Hey, Julie, should I pick up some cerulean felt for you?”

The answer, by the way? Yes!

4 thoughts on “How-to: Upcycled Paper Swatch Cards”

  1. Thank you for this idea. I will put it into action right away. It is such a practical way to keep track. And so handy. I pinned it to my upcycle board also.

  2. This is a neat idea, and something fun to do when I want to play with my art supplies but don’t really know what to do.

    How do you attach fabric? Or do you just punch a hole in the fabric?

    1. With fabric, it depends on the paper and the type of fabric. Spray mount or double-sided tape work well with any type of fabric, and that’s what I usually use, but if the paper is a little sturdier–cardstock-weight, say–you can also stitch the fabric straight to the paper with a long stitch. And then you punch a hole in the paper and put on a book ring!

  3. I like that you mention you include a sample of the color and name for your fabric on each swatch card. Knowing the materials would be important to ensure you’re able to know what fabric you want for any projects you’re working on. When organizing your swatch cards, it would probably be a good idea to figure out which method will be the easiest to remember and go through, such as by name or color.

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