Card Making – 1 Paper Pack, 27 Cards

     Hey everyone, how’s it going? Hope you’re all doing well. Boy do I have a mammoth card making session to share with you today though!

     27 cards, as the title of this posts suggests. Recently, I discovered a YouTuber named Jess Crafts. She has videos where she gets one 6×6″ paper pack and makes 20+ cards using mostly just the paper pack. It was quite inspiring and I was filled with the urge to find a paper pack and see how many cards I could make from it. I did use a few extra supplies – I used a ‘thank you’ stamp that I sometimes heat embossed and also I used a selection of die-cuts from my stash because the images matched and I needed some other sentiments but still, the material I used for these was minimal and all but a few strips of paper are from the same sepia toned paper pad.

     In a few hours, I made 27 cards and I had a lot of fun doing it. I find recently, I’ve been getting stressed making cards which should not be happening at all! It’s because I keep trying to make specific cards using techniques and when they don’t work out, I get frustrated and feel like I’m wasting supplies and money. Making all these cards with a limited range of supplies was so much fun though and quite relaxing. I wasn’t stressing myself out because I didn’t have a specific style stamp or something like that. I was just seeing what I could make with what I had. I still like making very unique and more complicated to put together cards but this kind of card making is something I definitely need to do regularly.

     It also helped me, somewhat, overcome my fear of mixing patterns. Is anyone else like that? I have so much trouble using patterned paper! I love them, which is why I have so much, but I often struggle to use it because I don’t really know how to mix patterns well. This kind of crafting definitely forced me out of my comfort zone a bit as I’d typically only use one kind of pattern on a card!

     I also learned a useful technique for getting more out of your paper from watching Jess Crafts videos. Usually, a paper pack has two of each pattern paper. From a 6×6″ piece, you can cut one front for an A6 size card. Cutting the paper leaves strips though. You can stick the two leftover strips together, covering up the join mark in the centre with another strip so it looks like a single piece, and you have another card front! That probably doesn’t make much sense, how I explained it, but she does it a lot in her videos and it’s a really quick and simple thing to do.

     Anyway, I’ve rambled on a lot here. I haven’t talked about each card specifically because they are all quite simple cards but if there’s any you want to know more about, ask away. I did make 27 cards but there aren’t 27 photos in this post, that’s just because some cards I made two of.

     To fellow card makers out there, is this a style of card making you’ve ever tried? If so, how did it go? If not, is it something you might try? I do recommend giving it a go! Also, which is your favourite card from this bunch? I’m quite fond of the first card I showed which was made using all those little scraps of paper left over!