I hope you had a fantastic time yesterday on the hop! If you missed it, please click here to go to the beginning to see all the great posts and videos. Today, I wanted to take a little more time to share how I went about making 35 cards from a 24 sheet single sided 6×6 pad. If you are like me, you tend to collect paper pads and use only a couple sheets from them before buying another because the paper is just so darn cute or pretty. Right? I’ve always been a fan of the amazing Kristie Marcotte, but I struggle using sketches so I resisted going that route. Then I found the genius Jess Crafts, and she totally inspired me to actually use my paper! Her ideas were a starting point for me and provided the flexibility I needed.

My process:

I started by tearing out all the pages and sorting them. Cut-aparts, which work well as sentiments and focal points, were all cut apart with my paper trimmer. I matched them up to the papers they seemed to coordinate with best. I went through my stash and found coordinating colors of cardstock when possible… pulling at first from scraps only. I picked a couple types of bling that matched, and grabbed ribbon and old embellishments that I thought worked with the paper. Since many of the papers had gold foiling, I also grabbed my gold Rinea paper to use as mats and gold mirror paper to use for die cuts. I made 24 card bases to start, not wanting to set the expectations to high. LOL

The main tip I learned from Jess was to take normal patterned paper (not the tricky kinds) and cut it at 4″. Then cut both the 4″ and the remaining 2″ strip to a length of 5.25″. With this tip, you get the 4″ piece to cover a card with a slight margin around it, and the 2″ piece can be used alone or with another 2″ piece for another card. So I proceeded to cut all the normal papers accordingly and I used baggies to keep coordinating pieces and cut aparts together. 2 pages of the pack were borders. You could use the paper like other patterned paper, but I felt like I could stretch it further by cutting it up efficiently. I wish I had thought to snap a pic of the paper before chopping it up! As we look at the first batch of cards I will point out the groupings of borders. I was able to keep them in chunks of 2. Let’s get into it and you’ll see what I mean!

In this grouping of 6 cards, I cut the row of houses paper as described above to get 2 cards with full panels and 2 with 2″ strips. I used cut aparts on all 4, though the smaller ones needed a sentiment stamped on them, which I pulled from an old Winnie & Walter set called Sentimental Winter. I added a cardstock strip and added foil with double sided adhesive strips. This added another foil element since the paper didn’t have it but the cut apart did, *and* it helped the cut apart stand off the background along with the cardstock mat. The larger, matted cut aparts were used on the cards with the 2″ cuts of paper and since it covered most of the card I opted not to add another patterned paper. This was the perfect opportunity to use some old foam snowflakes I bought *years and years* ago. The last 2 cards were made with only 2 border strips and pink cardstock. I used the Falling Snow stencil from SSS with Versamark and white embossing powder to make the panel above the borders. Then I gold embossed the sentiment, also from SSS called Stained Glass Greetings.

Let’s look at another card set, and an example of the flexibility of this process.

I had 2 sheets of this super fun, gold foiled paper with string lights, and 2 coordinating cut aparts. I cut 1 sheet into the 4″ and 2″ pieces, but the other I cut in half for 2 3″ pieces. I used the 4″ to make a card front, and added a heat embossed white cardstock sentiment panel with a Sunny Studios sentiment. The left over 2″ strip, I used in the middle of the card and ink blended Distress Oxide ink on either side of the card base to match the cut apart. The blended areas were splattered with water to create the look of snow, and the patterned paper strip was lined with metallic ribbon to give it a finished look. The 3″ pieces each made their own card, one with an ink blended edge and the other left white since it didn’t have a cut apart. The cut aparts were heat embossed with sentiments from Jane’s Doodles Deck the Halls set and a Creative Stamping magazine freebie stamp set. I pulled out another old light embellishment and added sequins to finish them all off. This shows that you could easily cut all you normal patterned paper into 3″ strips and get 2 cards from each page if you can get creative with the rest of the card front! I opted to stick to the 4″/2″ for most cards to let the pretty paper take center stage.

Well, that was a lot to take in! Tomorrow I will show how I dealt with the trickier papers, more of the border sheets, a border only page and the 2 pages with a 6×6 sentiment designed to either be framed or made into a 6×6 card. Thanks for sticking around and I hope you learned how you can tackle those 6×6 pads in a new way while using up old embellishments!

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