With the holidays over, I’m getting back in to card making.  I was doing a little organizing in my craft room and… I have way too much paper.  I see a cute paper pad and can’t seem to resist.  So, my resolution for the year is to use up some of the older paper.  My goal is to use 1 old paper pad for every new paper pad I use (or purchase).

I’ll be donating most of the cards and as I have already made cards for the upcoming holidays, I decided to pull out an old DCWV 12×12 paper pad – Tahiti Beach stack.  It’s cute paper with many of the patterns having a shiny glittered finish.  I’ve used several sheets of paper over the years but still had about 14 12×12 sheets left.  After so many Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas cards it was nice to just do some cards with no sentiment or “generic” sentiments.  As the charity where I donate the cards will be sending them to different locations, I was also able to make multiples of the same card.

I wasn’t sure what to do with the “sand” paper, so decided to use it as the background.  One of the 12×12 sheets was several stripes of different patterns that coordinated with the paper pad.  I cut the stripes apart and was able to use them on several cards.  For this card, I added a red floral strip to break up the beach themed word paper.

For the next card I used almost 1 full sheet of the floral paper.  You can’t see it in the photo, but the white flowers have a shiny glitter finish.  Besides an overabundance of pattern paper, I have lots of one-off sheets of cardstock.  I found a single sheet of this light blue cardstock that coordinated nicely with the blue in the flowers.  To balance the busy floral print I added a simple “Thank You” sentiment.

I still had a full sheet of the beach themed word paper and decided to try it as a background.  I added a strip of the left-over blue cardstock, another strip from the 12×12 sheet of pattern stripes and a strip of glittered washi tape.  With all the words on the background paper, I decided to skip adding a sentiment.

There was a small piece of the pink-ish floral paper left.  I paired it with a diagonal stripe paper and another piece of the light blue cardstock.  For the first layout I added a “Thinking of You” sentiment stamped in light blue ink.  For some dimension I added a few gray flowers with blue brads as the centers. For the second layout I added some more of the glittered washi tape and skipped the sentiment.

For the next 3 layouts I used a taupe striped paper and another of the beach themed word papers.  For the first layout I added a strip of light blue cardstock and stamped a sentiment in Memento Bahama Blue ink.  For the second layout, I added a strip of the light blue cardstock and instead of a sentiment stamped some flip-flop sandals and colored them using Copic markers.  For the third layout I skipped the sentiment and added another strip from the 12×12 sheet of pattern stripes.

There was still more of the beach themed word paper, so I used that for a background again.  For the banner on the right side of the first card, I fish-tailed and matted a piece of the “sand” paper.  On top of the banner, I added a strip from the 12×12 sheet of pattern stripes.  I used a sailboat stamp, Copic markers and a die to create the embellishment.   For the second card, I cut the “sand” paper on the diagonal.  To cover the seam I added a pattern strip across the card.  To add some interest to the top of the card I added a small flag that coordinates with the color in the pattern strip.

I still had a 1/2 sheet of the striped paper and a full sheet of the aqua paper that I wanted to use.  I couldn’t find a color of cardstock that I liked with the papers, so decided to skip any matting.  I didn’t like the look of a straight line between the papers, so pulled out a Creative Memories wavy paper cutter.  I think the wavy edges add some interest.  Instead of a sentiment, I stamped the beach scene and colored it with colored pencil.  It’s a very simple card, but I think it’s my favorite of the bunch.

I used 12 different layouts and ended up with 38 cards.  I still have a few scraps left but I think I can call this paper pad “done”.