If you’re like me you can’t pass up a cute paper pad.  That’s how I ended up with the Craft Smith Palm Springs paper pad.  The colors are gorgeous, the prints are fun and it was on sale.  My inability to pass up cute and sale, was even worse with this paper pad since there was also a coordinating tube of washi tape.

Unfortunately not passing on cute paper pads mean I have more paper than time to use it.  In an effort to thin down my printed paper stash, I’m pulling out older paper pads that I haven’t gotten around to using or have only used a couple of sheets.  I plan to make a few sets of cards from each paper pad and whatever I can’t/don’t use I’ll be adding to the “for sale” stack.

As I was gathering supplies to get started I ran across my container of brads, not to be confused with a package of brads.  This container holds 20+ packages of brads with 80-100 brads per package.  Yes, there was a sale incident where each package was only 25 cents.  How could I pass that up?

So with an abundance of paper, washi tape and brads, I got started on my first set of cards.  I made at least 3 cards with each paper/layout combination.  The first set of cards used one of my favorite sketches, #218 from OWH.  I liked the paper combo so much I decided to make another set of cards using the same paper but switching to OWH sketch #227.  The orange “Sunny State of Mind” sentiment is some of the coordinating washi tape that I placed on white paper and then cut to size.

OWH sketch #218 worked so well that I decided to just switch up the colors of the background, matting and brads and make another set of cards.  This time using the washi tape for the small banner.  After making a set of 3 cards I ran out of the “Sunny State of Mind” paper but since there was still enough of the orange background paper for a more cards I pulled out a floral print and kept going with the same sketch.  I decided to skip the brads on this set of cards since the floral focal panel is quite busy.

There was now a partial sheet of the floral paper so I thumbed through the paper pad and found the green starburst print to pair it with.  This set of cards uses new-to-me sketch #259 from OWH.  For a punch of color I used bright pink cardstock for the strip across the bottom of the card and the brads in the upper right corner.  There was still some of the floral print paper left.  So for the next set of cards I paired it with an off-white print and the leftover strip of green starburst paper.  I used another OWH sketch also labeled #227.

For the last 3 sets of cards I pulled out a cactus print paper to use for the focal panels.  The first set (OWH sketch #20) uses the rest of the off-white print for the background and a gold foil print paper also from the Palm Springs paper pad.  The last 2 sets of cards (MFT sketches #516 and #503) use a turquoise print paper for the background and feature turquoise satin mirror paper for the banner and circle embellishments.

I ended up making 30 cards using the Palm Springs paper before I got bored.  There are still some papers that I’d like to use, but I did find several sheets that I know I won’t use so I’ve put those aside to sell.