24 Cards from One Little Paper Pad!

Today I'll keep my promise and show you how to take one old-ish piece of paper, add some more strips from that same paper pad and make 12 more cards!

One of the great things about My Mind's Eye (and a few other manufacturers) is that their colors are very consistent as product lines are released. So this new line called "Miss Caroline" had the same aqua blue/green that was in a line called "Dreamy 2" many years ago. I just happened to buy a huge pack of "Dreamy 2" on peachycheap.com one day and of course, I've never used one piece of it!

I knew I had 2 pieces of striped 6x6 paper with aqua blue so into my blue paper I went and ran across this piece! Perfecto! (This is why I love organizing by color!)

This paper sat in my drawer for years, just waiting for a chance to be used. :) As is often the case, I much prefer the "B Side" of this paper. The paisley seems a little dated now.

For a monochromatic look, I cut a piece of (3 3/16" x 4 3/4") kraft cardstock smaller than the kraft card front. This is the piece I used to build the card design on. By layering your design onto a mat, you will always use less patterned paper - so a matted design is a good choice when you're short on patterned paper for a layout or a card.

Here's the card - the aqua part is 3 x 2 11/16" - because you can get 12 pieces of paper that 3x3 out of one 12x12 piece of paper.

Using more of the 6x6 pad, I found a peachy dot, a yellow tiny floral and a stripe with the peach and the blue in it, to make it all blend. I cut those into randomly sized strips (the stripe is 1") and just put it all together.

I made a little cream cardstock tag for the front with the sentiment. I was down to about 4 pieces of the paper pad and none of them were floral so I looked at the empty paper pad and knew I needed 12 butterflies for the card fronts. A-ha moment! I punched the butterflies out of the front cover! Voila! Then I even had enough to punch 12 smaller butterflies for a little somethin' somethin' on the inside. I like to put a little somethin' somethin' on the inside of the card sometimes and I think I will start doing that more often!

Inside:
(Normally I put a sentiment but for this theme, sympathy, I prefer writing it.)

I still have 4 pieces of paper from that paper pad, calling to me....MAKE ME INTO SOMETHING GOOD! If I do - I'll let ya know but I'm very happy that I got 24 cards out of one paper pad (plus one piece of 12x12 paper).

I'll definitely be buying more paper pads soon!