Hello everyone, it’s Zinia here and welcome back to the American Crafts blog! Today I’d like to share with you my three favorite ways to use patterned paper and create a layout using those techniques. The best part is, these techniques require no embellishments! Although I’m a huge fan of embellishments (especially dimensional ones) there’s nothing more versatile than patterned paper.
FUSSY CUTTING
The first paper technique I love is fussy cutting. Give me floral papers and I’ll be happy forever. Ephemera packs, no matter how beautiful, never have enough floral images. A floral patterned paper can be cut into a lot of gorgeous floral die-cuts that you can use to embellish your projects.
STICKER MAKING
Another fun thing to do with paper is to turn them into stickers. I especially love creating stickers with smaller paper dimensions like 6×6 or 6×8. These smaller rectangle images work perfect for planners and notebooks as well as other paper crafts. To create the stickers you only need to cover the back side of the paper with double sided tape and cut them.
PAPER STRIPS
I absolutely adore creating collage backgrounds with patterned paper in any geometric shapes. My go-to choice would always be paper strips. I love 12” strips of pattern paper, usually as thin as ½”. You can use them for a variety of different compositions and techniques from simple things like a striped background to more complicated ideas like paper weaving.
Next, let me show you how these three things can be combined together to create a scrapbook layout exclusively made out of patterned paper.
First, I used the paper strips to create a partial background for my design. I used my strips vertically on the left side of my page. Then I fussy cut a bunch of floral images and used them as embellishments around my photo. Last but not least I used a few word stickers and larger rectangles around my photo/flower cluster.
Thanks for visiting the American Crafts blog today! I can't wait to see you try out these 3 techniques. Do you have any paper tricks of your own? Comment below!
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