paper: Five Ideas for 6x6 Paper Pads by Gretchen Mcelveen | pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Hi there! As a cardmaker in addition to being a scrapbooker, I end up with a lot of half-used 6×6 paper pads. I love the 6×6 pads for my cards, but I can only make so many cards with one pad before I am ready to use something different! Lately I have been trying to figure out how to use the 6×6 pads more in my scrapbooking so they don’t go to waste. No pretty paper should go unused! I have come up with a few ways to scrapbook with 6×6 pads and I am going to share them with you today.

Use Them as Photo Mats for your Instagram Photos
6×6 paper pads make perfect photo mats for your square Instagram photos. I used the entire 6×6 sheet to mat the photo on this layout. However if you want less mat, just crop the 6×6 sheet to 5×5 or even 4 ½ x 4 ½!

Punch Stuff out of Them!
No need to waste a whole 12×12 sheet of paper when you want to punch out a couple of things. Use the 6×6 sheets instead!

Layer Them to Create a Background for a Layout
Combine a couple or several different 6×6 sheets to make the background for your scrapbook page. One fun thing about 6×6 pads is that all the papers usually coordinate. That makes it easy to use a few different sheets together on a page! On this page I used 4 6×6 sheets: 2 sheets of the starry paper, 1 purple sheet, and 1 orange sheet.
tip: I used another 6×6 sheet of the purple paper to make the photo corners here. I just cut 3 of the corners off the 6×6 sheet and had 3 easy photo corners to add to the page. Just another way to not have to waste a 12×12 sheet!

Cut Them Up to Use on your Project Life Pages
Once again, no need to waste a whole 12×12 sheet of paper when you have a 6×6 pad! Use the 6×6 sheets as photo mats, journaling blocks, and fillers for the pockets in your Project Life pages.
??Confession:? I don’t really do Project Life. BUT I do like to throw a Project Life-style page into my albums every now and then. It really adds some fun contrast between the regular 12×12 pages.

Use them for Mini Albums!
6×6 sheets are great for mini-albums! Even if your mini album is not 6×6, these sheets are a great size to use. No need to be cutting up those 12×12 sheets! And with all the coordinating papers in a 6×6 pad, you may only need 1 pad to complete an entire mini album.
I have made a 6×6 2-ring mini-album to keep track of some races that I have run. It is very easy to use 6×6 sheets as the background for each of the pages in the album.

Thanks for stopping by today! Hopefully this gave you some fun ideas and inspired you to use those 6×6 paper pads in your scrapbooking!

Gretchen is a physical therapist by day and a scrapbooker by night! She started scrapbooking 10 years ago after she got married and had all those wedding pictures to scrap. She and her husband do not have children (yet); but between friends, pets, family members, hobbies, and travelling adventures she still has plenty to scrap! Gretchen was a Creating Keepsakes Dream Team member this year and she currently designs for KI Memories/Hampton Art and Noel Mignon kit club. You can keep up with her and see more of her work on her “blog”:www.gretchenmac.blogspot.com.

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11 October 2013

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