Graduation Cards Introducing PaperPapers.com

Hey everyone!  I don't know about you, but I have a whole bunch of graduation cards to make this year.  For my husband and his siblings, many of our grandchildren are graduating from High School in the next few weeks.  Three of our grandchildren are graduating and two of our great-nephews are as well.  There's no way possible for us to be in so many places all at once as we are scattered across several states, so in those cases, a card will let them know we are thinking of them on their special day.

I've also been switching some of my white cardstock over to another brand that I like even more than Neenah Solar White which is Cougar Digital White Super Smooth - 8.5X11 Letter Card Stock Paper 110lb COVER - 200 PK.  This is a 298 GSM/#110 Cardstock.  I love the super smooth surface of this cardstock for stamping.  I still use Papertrey Ink for the majority of my card bases, but I love stamping on the super smooth surface of the Cougar for stamping my images and die cutting.  The surface is so smooth that the ink blends right away and doesn't take as long to even out after stamping.

Last month, I decided that I wanted to have a broader selection of specialty cardstock available to me and so I started out buying one here and one there to see whose I liked.  I found a great source for bulk cardstock in a variety of styles and colors.  I had bought a couple of things from them since I started my blog, but this was the first time that I really paid attention to what they had to offer.

You know how I love shimmer, shine, and sparkle so metallic cardstocks are right up my alley!  But at most stores, they are quite costly at $1.00 or more per sheet. And it can be difficult to find the right color when you can't be there to shop in person.  So I went back to the place where I had made my most recent purchase to see what they offered and I ordered a few colors that I thought I might like.  The nice thing about this company is that when they send your order, they also send some sampler packs of other colors and styles of paper.  I was specifically looking for shimmer and metallic cardstock.  That ended up giving me more colors to look at in person and so I ordered more.  I have pretty much all the colors I want at this time.  I have been so impressed with this company that I asked if they had an affiliate program.  They did not, so I shared the company that I am an affiliate through with them.  They signed up and got approved and asked me to apply so they could approve me.  Now, I get to share this resource with you.

Introducing PaperPapers.com.   They have an enormous selection of cardstock and specialty papers available and many sizes as well. They will also cut cardstock for you if you so choose.  When you are searching for any kind of paper, narrow it down to the size paper and the quantity you are looking for and that will eliminate most of the extra sizes that as cardmakers we aren't interested in.  This company also has envelopes if you want something coordinating for a particular occasion.  They offer sample packs by color for purchase and in everything else, the smallest available quantity is a 25 pack.  So if you narrow it down by size and quantity, that also eliminates looking through thousands of possibilities.  Their selection is huge!  Since mostly I was looking for metallics, I selected that as my first criteria.  Then I told it 25 as my quantity so that greatly reduced my list of what I had to look through.  There's a whole section on the left-hand sidebar for ways to search; size, color, weight, quantity, etc. 

Pay close attention to the GSM and weight of your selections.  If you don't understand about GSM and how that translates to weight, PaperPapers has a great guide on their website here.  I was quite surprised to find that a few of the papers I selected were only available in 249 GSM which equals 92# but it's still quite heavy and will certainly work for most of the purposes I have.  I like to use this type of cardstock for backgrounds and that type of thing but rarely use it for a card base.  However, it is heavy enough that I could.  In fact, on one of the graduation cards I made, I did use the Silver Metallic as a card base.  I have a wide variety of weights here from 92# up to 111# cardstock.

I store my cardstock in the same way as Jennifer McGuire, using Job Ticket Holders so I have it labeled by the company and then color.  In this first picture, you can see that there is only one metallic cardstock that is from another company and that is the Misty Rose Metallic because PaperPapers didn't offer anything in this color.  I wanted Mauve but I had to buy 50 sheets of this and pay shipping in addition to that.  It was reasonably priced until then.  I had previously ordered some mauve papers from other suppliers that turned out to be baby pink, not mauve or were so thin because they call it heavy weight and don't list the GSM.  I don't like sending stuff back, so when I got my first order with samples from PaperPapers, I was super excited to see the quality and to order additional colors. I have about one and a half shelves of the metallic cardstock, so I have my most used favorites sharing a shelf with regular favorite cardstock.

As you can see, I also cut the label from the shrink wrap on the paper pack itself and tuck it into the cardstock holder.  This tells me the GSM, Weight, Color, and Brand of Paper it is.  In this case of the top image, the brand is Curious Metallics, the color is Peacock and it is a #111/300 GSM Cover Weight Cardstock.

Let's get into the cards so I can show and tell you which colors I used.  These cards consisted mostly of die cutting and assembly with not much stamping involved so let me show you some samples.

For this card, I chose Peacock Metallic cardstock with White Cardstock and Gold Foil Cardstock.  Gold foiled cardstock is hard to find at a reasonable price, so when I find it at a reasonable price, I buy a few packs.  So far as I can tell, PaperPapers does not carry gold or silver in the shiny metallic (mirror) finish, only the shimmer but for this card, I wanted the shiny gold.  I used the Pink Fresh Studios Gatsby Die cutting the background piece from Shine Pearl White Metallic cardstock and the front piece from gold mirrored cardstock.  I had a lot of trouble the first time around with the skinny detailed piece and messed it up before getting it on the card, so for the second try, I Xyroned my paper strip before cutting it.  This worked much better.  The Hooray Die is from Simon Says Stamp and is a favorite.  The whole front of the card is done with the specialty papers while the card base is Stamper's Select White which is a nice heavy weight #110 cardstock.  I like using it for all my card bases. This card is for my granddaughter, Emily, whose favorite color is teal.

Inside, I stamped a greeting from Poppy Stamps Art Deco Frames & Phrases that says, Congratulations, you did it!  Each of my cards is the same style and sentiment and only has different colors.

This card is for one of my grandsons, Charlie.  He loves Red - all colors and shades of red to include pink, coral and everything in between.  He also really prefers silver over gold so I actually did use Curious Metallics Silver cardstock for this cardbase.  Again I used Shine Pearl White Metallic with Silver Matte Foil Board.  Having learned my lesson from the first attempt, I Xyroned the cardstock first and then die cut it.  I did the same with the Hooray Die cut.  Mostly, I am okay with using Ranger Multi Medium Matte or Connect Glue, but these are very intricate dies, so I was trying to make my life simpler.

I also have a Navy with Grey and White and a different Red with Gold and White version of this card.  I have just one more to do to be finished for this year.  Once I figured out my design, it went pretty quickly.

If you've hung around till the end of this post, I'll be sharing another post with all of the metallic cardstocks I got and sharing photos of it with you in my next post.  I should warn you to start with a few colors at a time.  It's pretty easy to hit the $39.00 mark for free shipping.  I planned ahead for this year to get reinkers and specialty card stocks and to try not to buy stamps unless I know that I will use them. There's definitely a purge coming in my future!  There were so many times I wished I had more colors in the Metallic Cardstock and now I feel like I have pretty much every color.

Click here for my PaperPapers.com Affiliate Link

Thank you for your support!  There's a couple of colors that my friend, Cindy O, will be especially interested in seeing, so stay tuned to see all of the colors I got.