A whole collection in a tiny package…
Hello. My name is Niki and I am a paper-aholic. There, I admitted it. I can’t bare to miss out on a single pattern and therefore usually HAVE to buy every paper in a collection, usually in the form of a collection pack or paper stack. But sometimes the collection packs aren’t available and I find myself buying each paper individually, which can mount up a bit. In the case of My Mind’s Eye and their latest ‘Jubilee’ collections, they don’t appear to have collection packs or paper pads available – it’s not that they aren’t in stock, I think they just haven’t made them for this collection. With four collections within ‘Jubilee’ this particular shopping spree ended up being pretty pricy, so I ousted the Jubilee ‘Tangerine’ collection from my basket, and then promptly felt as though I was missing out on something wonderful. So I put the 6×6″ paper pad into my basket instead, together with the emphemera pack and some enamel dots. Very restrained of me.
The four layouts I have to share with you today are made with that 6×6 paper pad, the emphemera pack and the endmel dots. And that’s pretty much it. For the backgrounds I went through my stash of older papers and picked out a few neutral and subtle patterns that complimented the ‘Tangerine’ colours.
For my ‘New Heights’ layout I had the idea of using small strips of paper and thought it would be fun to try and get every single pattern in the collection onto one layout. There’s 12 double-sided papers in the 6×6 pad (two of each), which made 24 patterns, which therefore needed to be 0.5″ wide each to fit every single one on the layout. In the end I preferred the look of the paper strips to be slightly in from the edges and therefore I ousted two of the strips, but there are still 22 different patterns on this layout (24 if you include my two background sheets!) I simply arranged the strips in roughly colour order from light to dark and got sticking. I deliberately didn’t use my adhesive all the way to the ends so that I could roll up the ends to add a bit of dimension to the layout.
My next idea was to use four of the 6×6 sheets to make up one background sheet. I actually trimmed them slightly and stuck them all onto an old patterned paper sheet with a small amount of that showing around the edges. I then simply built my layout on top, again using the ephemera pack for my embellishments and I cut a title on my silhouette machine.
Another way to make the most of the 6×6 paper pad was to punch small shapes from all the patterns and scatter them across a neutral background. I thought it would be easier to cut the background on my silhouette and then piece the papers behind the holes, which is what I did. Part way into this layout I found myself wondering why I thought that would be easier, when simply punching many of the same shape with a hand punch seemed much more simple…however, I had started so stuck with it! I absolutely love the effect of this background and I therefore decided to keep the remainder of my layout small and clustered down in one corner so I could show off as much of the background as possible. I added the stitching detail by hand.
And finally, my last idea for my 6×6 paper pad was to cut several small pieces from the different patterns and piece them together to make a large frame for my layout. Even though I’m pretty good with my measurements, somehow they didn’t quite fit together properly and there is a bit of a botch job on the corner underneath my photos (that’s between me and you by the way, please don’t tell anyone). But my crafty motto is ‘there’s no mistakes only opportunities’, and that is why my photos are placed where they are and I quite like them up there and no one would ever know that that wasn’t my original plan for my photos! A happy accident.
Once I had finally got the frame as good as it was going to get (I assembled it on another piece of paper so I could lift it and move it around as one piece), I trimmed off the overhangs and inked the edges around the outside and around the inside of the frame to make it look as though it had always been one piece of paper. Similarly to the triangle background, I really love the result and it’s something I would absolutely not have done if I’d had a whole 12×12 sheet of each pattern in the collection.
My conclusion on this little experiment of mine is that buying the 6×6 paper pad instead of twelve individual sheets of 12×12 papers in the collection worked out considerably cheaper, yet still got me every single pattern in the collection, albeit they were scaled down versions of the patterns (which I loved by the way) but also that having smaller sheets gave me more freedom. 12×12 papers are definitely daunting, I regularly find myself not wanting to cut them up, but I just didn’t care about using the 6×6 sheets in the same way – I tore into them, cutting small strips off them and punching shapes out of them, something I definitely wouldn’t have done with 12×12 sheets. And I’ve ended up with four layouts that I’m really pleased with, that are a bit different to those of my usual style. Another happy accident 🙂
Supplies:
My Mind’s Eye Jubilee ‘Tangerine’ 6×6 paper pad
My Mind’s Eye Jubilee ‘Tangerine’ Ephemera pack
My Mind’s Eye Jubilee ‘Tangerine’ Enamel Dots
