If you have any questions or need any help, you can contact me at
hello@jesscrafts.com
I fell in love with papercrafting over 15 years ago because I fell in love with patterned paper. At the time, you could walk into a scrapbooking store and choose a beautiful piece for less than $1 and, since money was always tight, this felt more doable than buying new stamps or stencil. I especially loved searching the 25 cent clearance bin for my favorite companies Basic Grey or Cosmo Cricket. Every piece was precious, but so was every scrap.
Over time, my budget eased and I accumulated more supplies than I could use. But I was an avid and regular crafter and I was lucky to share my love of crafting with my mom and sister. We would make cards together to donate to organizations like Operation Write Home because we wanted to serve others with our hobby. I created printable jokes and shared them on my blog to make the donation process easier.
In 2014, I started the JessCrafts YouTube channel to share all the fancy techniques I was learning with my new supplies. I thought that simple patterned paper cards wouldn’t be enough to be noticed on YouTube. But I was wrong. A few years in, I shared my first video where I used a 6×6 paper pad until there was nothing but tiny scraps and there were so many of you that loved patterned paper and wanted ideas to make the most of it.
I challenged myself to leave less and less behind with each patterned paper tutorial. I used the littlest scraps to make cards or I glued the scraps to the inside as extra decoration. A friend at the local scrapbook store, before we lost them all, mentioned One Sheet Wonders, which used a whole sheet of paper and left no scraps. This sounded brilliant, but most of the designs I could find were for 12×12 paper (I prefer 6×6) or only used tiny bits of paper to make a lot of cards from one sheet. I didn’t need 6 cards from one sheet of 6×6 paper. I would never make a dent in my stash at that rate. I tucked the thought in the back of my mind.
Even after many videos and using up lots of paper pads, I always found a cute new paper pad I had to have. There were some go to card designs and sketches that would help me use the paper, but I wanted a resource to make just a few cards at a time, instead of using an entire pad, without leaving a pile of scraps.
So in October of 2020 I made my first “One Sheet Wonder” using 6×6 paper and making just two cards. I shared it on YouTube and the response was amazing. There were so many others just wanting simple card ideas for the beautiful paper they loved collecting.
I decided my process would be simpler. Instead of making a bunch of different designs from one piece of intricately cut patterned paper, I would make fewer cards with each sheet (usually 1-4) to keep things simple and actually help chip away at the stash we all love to build.
Now I’ve made over 60 templates and coordinating sketches available to download at jesscrafts.com.
I’ve made templates for many different sizes of paper and cards so that each person who stops by my site or YouTube channel can find a template, select a piece of paper from their stash, and make a few cards without adding anything to the ever growing pile of patterned paper scraps that can leave us guilty or overwhelmed.
To put it simply, I love cutting up pretty paper, making cards, and sending them away to make someone smile. I want you to love making and sending cards too so I’m sharing these videos, templates, and other resources to put some more simplicity and joy into the process.