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Month: June 2020

Echo Park Pirate Tales 6×6 Paper Pad

Echo Park Pirate Tales 6×6 Paper Pad

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So…  My Echo Park mystery box included the Pirate Tales 6×6 paper pad.  It wasn’t a paper pad I normally would have picked since I tend to go for bright colors but the black, navy and burgundy had a nice masculine feel to them.  And masculine cards are a common request with the charity where I donate my cards.

Since I like to have a few extras of commonly used supplies, I had a brand new package of Recollections black cardstock which I was able to use as the matting for most of the cards.  For masculine cards I tend to keep the embellishments to a minimum so the brads, bakers twine and Love From Lizi peel-offs I had on-hand worked perfectly.  For sentiments, I decided to use the cut-aparts in the paper pad.  They were all good sized, 2 x 2 and 2 x 3 inches, and had cute pirate themed sayings or images.

I really liked the paper with the red, white and blue banners.  I thought it was too busy for a background so instead picked a sketch where I could still use a larger piece as a focal panel.  I added the cute “Shiver me timbers” cut-apart and a few metallic brads and this card was done.

I created the focal panel on this card by combining a 2×3 inch cut-apart for the top and printed paper for the bottom.  This was a great way to use up cut-aparts and smaller pieces of the printed paper.  And the horizontal strip across the panel covered any small gaps where the printed paper was a little short.

It’s a simple layout, but I use it quite frequently.  For these cards it worked great with the 2×3 inch cut-aparts.  The layout is very easy to modify to work with different sized focal panels and to combine printed papers.

The paper pad had a lot of busier prints and just a few tone-on-tone papers.  So instead of using the tone-on-tone as a background I used smaller pieces to “mute” the busier prints.  There’s just enough of the busy print showing without it being too overwhelming.  The Love from Lizi’s matte gold peel-offs on the navy horizontal strip pick up on the gold octopuses in the paper.

Although I still had a few larger pieces of paper left, the busyness and the direction of the prints made them difficult to combine.  Instead I stuck with using a single print and pairing it with a coordinating solid color cardstock.  The prints are quite colorful so there were lots of choices.  I selected burgundy for this card which also picked up on the color in the cut-apart.

While not my favorite paper pad, I did like the challenge of using a theme and colors outside my comfort zone.  For my next project I pulled out a 6×6 paper pad I’ve had in my craft room for a couple years.  There’s still so much fun stuff from the mystery box but I really need to use up some older supplies to make room for the new purchases.

Carta Bella Beach Day Collection Kit

Carta Bella Beach Day Collection Kit

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It’s been a while since my last post.  I was anxiously awaiting my Echo Park mystery box.  I had never ordered a mystery box before but had watched some unboxing videos of last years boxes.

I am really happy with all of the stuff they packed into the mystery box – several 12 x 12 collection kits, a 12 x 12 paper pad, a 6 x 6 paper pad, several packages of embellishments (brads, stickers, rub-ons, ephemera), stencil, stamp/die set…  It was definitely worth the $50.

After looking at everything I decided to start with the Carta Bella Beach Day Collection kit.  Besides the fun prints (surf boards, beach wear, beach balls), I was able to find several colors of coordinating cardstock in my craft room.  This was really convenient as local craft stores were all closed due to the coronavirus.  I had an unopened package of Recollections Navy cardstock which I used for most of the matting and several sheets of Recollections kraft cardstock that I used for backgrounds.

Since the surf board print was my favorite, no idea why as I’ve never been surfboarding, I decided to start with that.  I went with a simple layout which featured a large piece of the surf board print as the focal point.  There were several stickers with a surf theme which I used for the sentiments.

With all the bright colors I had tons of choices when picking cardstock.  Since the cardstock panel on this card wasn’t too large, I was able to find several pieces in the scrap bin which were the perfect size.  For this card I used orange, but I also used teal and bright green cardstock.  I cut the matting for the sentiments out of the 4 1/8 x 5 3/8 inch pieces of navy cardstock used for the background matting.  This helped conserve cardstock (since I couldn’t jump in the car and pick up some more) and once covered by the wood panel paper no one will know.

As there was some red in most of the papers I could have paired the red stripes with just about anything, but there’s just something about a red, white and blue card that I really like.  I’ve used this layout before and it’s one of my favorites.  I used some red mirror Love from Lizi peel-offs to separate the navy cardstock from the prints and to add a bit of shine.

This card was super easy.  The background paper already had the multi-colored stripes so it was just a matter of cutting it to the correct size and adding the surf board focal panel.  I again cut the matting for the sentiment out of the background matting.  To balance out the sentiment in the upper right corner I added a few bright green epoxy dots to the lower left corner.

At this point I was down to smaller pieces of paper, nothing large enough to use as a background.  I still had several stickers left so I looked for a sketch that I could modify to suit the size of the stickers.  I think some of the last cards I made turned out the best.  Trying to figure out how to use up the scraps forces me to be more creative.

This kit included 12 sheets of 12×12 paper so I was able to easily make 60+ cards.  I do find the kits a bit overwhelming when I first start, but once I make a couple of cards I’m usually off and running.  For the first several cards I made at least 4 using the same layout and papers.  As the paper scraps got smaller, I still made several cards with each layout but used different pattern papers.  It takes me a lot longer to use up all the paper and stickers in a collection kit.  For my next mystery box project I used a 6×6 paper pad.