6 by 6 paper pad week.

One of the recent additions that seem to be making a big noise in the scrapbooking industry is the 6 by 6 paper pads. This week on the blog we are going to be looking into them, finding out the pros and cons of these and how we can use them, not just on our cards, tags and mini albums , but on our scrapbooking pages as well.

Lots of people shy away from them because of their size when making a scrapbooking page, but there are ways and means around this, and we will look into those problems this week.

Papermaze has lots of paper pads, Vanessa always buys them if they come with a line that she has purchased for the shop. You can find them here.... Most of the large scrapbooking companies make these, sometimes they are double sided, sometimes not. Sometimes they have all the papers in the entire collection sometimes they don’t. If you are in any doubt about what they contain and you cannot get the relevant information from the internet, then please do not hesitate to phone the shop to ask. There is always someone there who can check the paper pads for you.

So…hands up how many of you have some 6 by 6 pads in your stash?

Hands up how many of you save them just for card making?

How many of you have them and don’t use them for scrapbooking?

And how many of you have them and don’t use them at all! Lol…….

I have to say I have some…( I refuse to say how many I have on the grounds that it may incriminate myself lol) And up until about 3 months ago they sat there and I didn’t use them. But then as they started to get more popular I realised that I have to figure out ways to use them.

Why buy them? Well they are a really good idea…really they are. Even for a scrapbooker.

1.      They are a really good way to by a whole collection cheaply. As I said before, most of the companies out there include their entire collection in their paper pads. So instead of having to pick and choose the papers you want depending on cost…. You can have the entire line.

2.      I don’t like cutting up an entire sheet of gorgeous 12 by 12 paper just for a square to use in my die cutting machine or for a punch…. so the paper pads are perfect for this or for a small part of the design on my page. I know I am not the only one who thinks like this. If you buy a paper pad there is usually more than one of each design in the pad…so you can cut up one small sheet and still have another one or possibly two left intact! Trust me…it works, I now cut up paper without a care in the world…( us scrapbookers are weird and wonderful! huh.)

They are easy to store...I put mine in a basket...so that is the easy part...but...what do you do with all the paper scraps? ...i cut down an envelope to the right size and adhere these to the back of the pads...when I get a bit of scrap...I pop it into the envelope and keep it safe...

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           They all have smaller patterns in. If you compare them to the 12 by 12 pieces of paper that are part of the same collection they are the same just scaled down…this works really well when using punches and die cut machines.

Over the next week we will be looking at these pads....I have put together a few projects for you..to show you a few different ways to use these in your crafting!

I grabbed the same paper so we could compare the difference….. here is what I made….. I left these really plain so you could see the difference.

This one was with the smaller size 6 by 6 card...

and this one was made with the same papers but in the 12 by 12 size....

here they are side by side...what can you see?

The first thing that strikes me is that the green in the smaller 6 by 6 size is much  richer in colour. And the pattern looks better smaller and more in scale with the project.

The other thing that i noticed was that the pattern paper underneath the blue banner doesn't show up as much...
 this paper...

.the problem with using 12 by 12 papers on something smaller the gaps between the flowers is bigger...so then you only see bits of the flowers through the blue banners.

so....for smaller things like cards etc....the smaller the pattern the better....and much better when only using smaller parts of it....even on a scrapbooking page...

Personally...when I see them together...I much prefer the card made by the 6 by 6 paper pad.

Over the next few days I am going to show you some projects that I made using the 6 by 6 paper pads and try and explain how they work for me and my style of scrapbooking.

Tune in for the next post when I make a page with some 12 by 12 paper pads.